A Generation Moves from Preoccupied to Occupy: Power Of Physical Presence in a Digital World

[marmar]

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

A Generation Moves from Preoccupied to Occupy
Power Of Physical Presence in a Digital World

by Jason Benlevi


Preoccupied by 24/7 entertainment and inhabiting a world surrounded by LCD screens on a variety of devices, the millennial generation was on its way to becoming completely virtualized, digitized, and distracted. But then something caught their attention — reality. They realized that the power of physical presence is a more potent force than adding your name to an online petition or making a one-click donation. The power of the Occupy movement is its persistent, dramatic, and effective presence.

There is a conventional “narrative” that the Occupy movement is the product of social media. I hold the contrarian view that the Occupy movement actually results from the shortcomings of and dissatisfaction with digital culture. Occupy participants are proving that only by exiting a screen-centric digital cocoon back into the physical world can their discontent with political reality attain the critical mass necessary to achieve change.

Political activists have been using digital/social media for a decade as a method of organizing and disseminating information with growing success. The 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections were increasingly affected by Internet blogs shared among growing circles of the public. Barack Obama owes his 2008 victory almost entirely to fundraising and organizing on the Net.

Although the Obama campaign flourished in the digital ether, it is his “ethereal” nature as a leader that has shown to be his greatest weakness. Delivering a great speech is not action. Saying is not doing. Obama has been, in some ways, a virtual president, a projection in which people have seen the leader they wanted to see, rather than the man who was actually there. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/21-4

[midnight]

1. Saying is not doing. I guess the time has come to sh*t or get off the pot,

as my father use to say.

[MedleyMisty]

2. Bullshit

Both social media and bodies on the line are needed.

Also, excuse me, but I'm on the oldest end and border between Millenials and Generation X, and we were never in any fucking danger of "distraction", and what the people who are now out on the streets were doing on those screens was building the foundations for Occupy. You can find Anonymous videos from last year calling for global revolution.

This guy needs to hang out on the internet and with people who are younger than him sometimes and get out of his bubble.

[Fumesucker]

3. Without the digital media I would probably be a Limbot..

It would be so much easier for me to just let go and go with the flow around me. Without the information to see through the flim-flam put up by the media it would be about impossible to resist.

[xchrom]

4. Interesting. Nt