does the boss’s cable-tv era ennui still hold true?
So I bought a .44 magnum, it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
’Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin’ the almighty peace
Judge said, “What you got in your defense son?”
“Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”— Bruce Springsteen, “57 Channels and Nothin’ On” (1992)
200 billion websites and nothin’ on.
3 billion Facebook users and nothin’ on.
2 billion TikTok users and nothin’ on.
Endless AI permutations but nothin’ on?
The question remains: what kind of system could produce somethin’ instead of nothin’? It’s a pressing issue from the channel-surfing era to our own doomscrolling times. To state the obvious, there’s actually lots of somethin’ goin’ on out there, but it would seem that our social systems and our media worlds are not assembling that abundant somethin’ effectively. So it still keeps fragmenting and dissolving into a kind of nothin’, one that devolves into frustration, unhappiness, rage, and even violence.
Lots of difference on the surface, lots of diversity, lots of opportunity for participation and expression, but until the underlying mechanisms of how we organize that difference changes, we’re probably doomed, the blessed name of Elvis, to rock and roll without getting anywhere.