Anti-syzygy

I got a text from my cousin the other day (a first year undergraduate) simply asking 'What's the difference between ontology and epistemology?' Well, as you can perhaps imagine, I was a wee bit surprised. I managed to spout some waffle about being and knowledge and the difference between continental and analytic methodologies in the reply. I'm not sure it went over all that well via text.

Why would I be so taken by this? Certainly not because of the question's author (a very bright wee thing she is). Neither do I think I'd be so taken aback had I read the question in a book, newspaper, e-mail, or 'blog even. I don't know about you, but the texts I generally send and receive are along the lines of 'fancy a pint?', 'am running late, be there in 5 mins' or some other such pithy banalities.

Texting is a medium I don't use for anything even approaching high-brow, cerebral thought. It's one of the reasons why, when these 'news' programmes ask us to 'txt in with your opinion', or 'send us your pictures' strikes me as undoubted dumbing down. It's what Charlie Brooker calls 'turning on the idiot magnet'. Perhaps that's why this text so challenged me. A shard of light entering a technology I continually associate with the mundane.

Marshall McClune tells us the median is the message, and to a certain extend I agree, but when such a everyday, playful median plays host to something so profound, deep and important, sometimes the oxymoronity (if that's a word, or anti-syzygy, which certainly isn't) can jolt us into thinking about something that wee bit deeper. Maybe like how on Maundy Thursday one can be aware anew of the sheer incongruity that everyday, banal bread can play host to such profound invested meaning.

It's also why I wanted to wirte this 'blog post. Yesterday I saw on the Guaridan webshite, the video recording of the police brutality at the G20 protests in London. Such user content, a mobile 'phone camera, recording abuse of power in supposidly a bastion of freedom, enlightenment, etc. Well, you can see my point before I make it...

If you've read this far, check out these links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/07/g20-police-assault-video

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http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Tomlinson-Case/