In a thoughtful essay for The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal recently made the case that after years of prioritizing “nowness,” the Internet is slowly pulling back from what he calls “the stream.” By this he means a move away from the fevered gush of Twitter and the Facebook timeline and toward a version of online life that is a little more removed, a touch more calm. A lake, not a river. One can’t keep up with everything, so why even try? To make his case, he points to the rise of the proudly impermanent Snapchat, evergreen and “snowfalled” longform stories, and, yes, Netflix’s season-dumping strategy. Rather than mourning the loss of the collective, he considers these moves from the opposite perspective: Taking a step back not only allows the breathing room necessary to appreciate and process, it restores a cultural sense of boundaries, of beginnings and endings. In TV’s post-stream future, we might share less but appreciate more. Everybody’s watching. Does it matter if we’re all looking in different directions?
via ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Black Mirror,’ and the Year in Television – Grantland.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog