By Takura Zhangazha*
In recent conversations with some colleagues, we reminisced
about libraries. Especially those
libraries that if you grew up in urban Zimbabwe would be close to a local
district or post office. And where you
had to get your parents consent and joining fee money to become a young member. These libraries tended to have two uses, at
that time (in the 90s). Because we didn’t
have 24 hour tv (if you had a TV in the first place) or mobile telephony let
alone the internet. The libraries tended
to serve at least three basic functions.
They were safe spaces for reading school textbooks or secondly, socializing
(we would play football or just hang about us friends afterwards).
The third aspect about the libraries and their function was that
they were also about enhancing one’s creativity or at least one’s ability to
think outside of the school textbook/examination box. That is if one wanted to do so. My method was to read the books that were not
in the school syllabus. That is how one
tended to encounter more African writers or wider thoughts on what I didn’t know to
be either philosophy or political-economy.
The encounters with those books and their ideas went on to help me have
a more systemic approach to then personal challenges as well as seek to
understand why Zimbabwean society was structured the way it was. In this, my attention span when trying to
review certain events or issues as they emerged (for example the advent of the
mobile phone and its then ridiculous costs and new lifestyle import).
And then there was the internet. By that time we were already at university
and were hearing of ‘email’, ‘yahoo’, Microsoft and ‘websites’.
All capped up
with something that we didn’t understand that was to be called ‘Y2K’ and how it
posed a threat to worldwide communications.
The library and more systematic attention spans on issues was beginning
to get wobbly for many of us. Books,
especially for the purposes of a critical consciousness, were no longer the ‘in-thing’. The world wide web was. Even if one had wait for the connect sound of
the dial up internet on a cumbersome and blinking screen of what was referred
to as the ‘personal computer’.
The rest is history.
The mobile phone and the internet with its now almost but inevitably
ubiquitous social media component now rule our national and personal attention
spans. And it’s not a bad thing. It can just get a little problematic in
relation to seeking out the bigger picture (any bigger picture of your choice-
be it personal, political or social). This
is because it is generally designed for us to consume as much new content as possible
(again be it personal or otherwise). And as social media generally occurs in the immediate it holds your attention
for an effective short period so you move on to the next thing or it can create it
for you even if it’s not there. While helping you finding or confirming what exactly you prefer to hear/see/ or read (even if briefly).
In doing the latter however social media can make you
question less and conform more. Or it
can create a homogeneity of thought and opinion that resonates with
feelings/emotions than it would with assumption of systematic rationality. As
would for example a book like Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’. In the process
it becomes a mixture of anger, angst and intuitive action. Or just simply entertainment (in both its
enjoyable moments or occupation of (brief) time perspective).
This however does not mean our shortened attention spans are
not responding to given realities and real time events as they occur. Social media is just helping with interpreting
this reality, at speed. And in this we may sometimes, again, miss the bigger
picture let alone motivation for such interpretation of the said reality. Hence in our political and economic real context,
most of us have become more impulsive and perpetually in search of an urgency and agency that
culminates in (brief) personal but at the same time collective ‘catharsis’.
Going forward we may need to understand, as some colleagues
in the global north are beginning to, that the medium is not the message. Or it does not to be. And on this, I almost always joke with young
colleagues and cdes that I interact with by asking what is the first thing they
look for in the morning when they wake up?
In good humour the answer is almost always, ‘my phone and the messages I
have received, if I actually slept at all without it’. Almost as though their mobile phones are essential
parts of their bodies or at least similar to necessary bodily functions.
The key issue however is to use the medium to enhance our ability
to understand our society better. And not just social media but the internet as
a whole. Or as I began this particular
write up, with an appreciation of the systematic and even ideological reasons
as to why our country is where it is today. With robust debate and discussion
on ideas (not as a religion), issues and realities as we are placed in the
world. Almost as though we are back at
the library, except at greater speed. That way we can still raise the democratic national
consciousness.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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