The Digital Petri Dish: Permutation #3 in B♭ Minor

By Umberto Salvagnin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 

Well, I think the biggest problem that I've been having with my paper as of right now is that every time I sit down to write, I am writing a new paper, because my thinking on the matter has shi
fted in one direction or another. My original stance was one highly critical of digital media, and though I felt it was representative of what I had actually experienced myself and witnessed in the lives of others, I didn't feel like it was the whole story. My most recent shift in thinking, which came about thanks to some really savvy feedback from +Eileen and Dr. Burton, has helped me to look at the Internet in a much more balanced light, seeing the good and the bad and recognizing the Internet more so as a tool than an influence--as something that cultures whatever we put into it. The problem is, that has brought me to a new impasse, in that such a stance paints societal "progress" as the source of modernity's awe deficiencies.

Disruptive Wonder, and Addicted to Awe

So, as I've been thinking about what I'd like to research this semester in my literature of awe class, I've been drawn to a single idea as a representation of all of my recent thoughts. I use the word idea loosely, because really it's a sound and a reaction, but in any case, I think it nicely sums up a component of awe. Have you ever been somewhere pretty ordinary when you heard a shriek of excitement from some little boy or girl, and it was like the whole world just transformed around you? You're all looking at the child and smiling for about five second, and then you look up, and it's as if the walls have been imbued with new life, and the mask of dignified adult stoicism comes down long enough for you to remember that you were a kid once, too--that you would have shrieked with joy at the same sight.

I think that moment of disruption opens the door to awe. This is an idea that Kelly Bulkeley touches upon in The Wondering Brain, where he proposes that a primary means of creating wonder in our lives is in disrupting the our self narrative. He writes: "One of the ways we elicit wonder is by scrambling the self temporarily so the world can seep in." I'm a little bit wary of having the world seep into me, but I think the point is a good one; experiencing wonder is sometimes more an act of allowing it into our lives and letting it fill us.