“If I can get Sandy to the summit, I’ll
bet she’ll be on TV talk shows. Do you think she will include me in her fame
and fanfare?” (178)
Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
Into Thin Air recounts the disastrous
expedition to Everest that Jon Krakauer along with three other climbing teams
undertook in 1996. Krakauer was initially asked to join Rob Hall’s team going
to Everest as a reporter for Outside Magazine. His journalistic function
on the team demonstrates the growing interest of mass audience for extreme
adventure narratives. Although Krakauer himself is a journalist, Into Thin
Air doesn’t fail to criticize the influence that new media has on
mountaineering. This nonfiction narrative is a direct testimony of the impact
that social media has on the public’s perception of mountaineering. Krakauer
further reminds us of the importance that social media has on its audience as
he recounts Fischer’s comment on Sandy Pittman: “if I can get Sandy to the
summit, I’ll bet she’ll be on TV talk shows. Do you think she will include me
in her frame and fanfare?” [1]
Fischer’s desire to be mentioned on social media platforms testifies of the
shift that is occurring in the mountaineering world. Expeditions to Everest
have become accessible to anyone with the means to afford such an expensive
journey.
Katie Ives and Gwen Cameron in an article for the Alpinist believe that the commercialization of mountaineering such as the one described in Into Thin Air is a direct result of our current need to over-share information. They write: “we live in a society that has become increasingly noisy and glaringly bright (…) Viewers are inundated with images in which the most obvious “extreme” and photogenic elements have been heightened for quick consumption.”[2] The cybernetic age has made information easily accessible and mainly has created a shift in our way of processing information. Mountaineering is one example of the effect of social media on its audience. Our perception of space has been transformed as we now can access information with the click of a button, “distance is erased as minute details of remote adventures are broadcast into our homes.”[3] The new ways in which the information is shared has thus created a shift in our way of thinking. The commercialization of mountaineering and its growing popularity demonstrates how new media has tricked us into thinking that mountaineering is easily accessible to the armchair adventurer. We are blinded by the glossy pictures and heroic recollections of events and thus have lost our ability to discern the copy from its original. Easily accessible information has impacted our interaction with space.
[1]
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the
Mount Everest Disaster. New York: Anchor, 1999. Print.
[2] Ives, Katie, and Gwen Cameron.
"American Climber Charlie Porter Dies in Punta Arenas." Alpinist
Newswire RSS. N.p., 26 Feb. 2014. Web.
<http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web14w/newswire-charlie-porter-dies>.
[3]
Ibid.
I was particularly interested in the notion that social media has reshaped our interaction with the environment. I believe that it is essential to understand how cybernetic systems have reshaped our societies in order to be able to grasp the impact that it has had on our perception of the environment (in your case in the perception of mountaineering.) Cybernetic systems have changed our society’s dynamic and thus our relationship with our environment through its interaction with the mass audience. Bill Nichols alludes to this concept as he states: “the computer (…) is an icon and a metaphor that suggests new ways of thinking about ourselves and our environment.” The computer and specifically Internet have brought societies together. We have become interconnected in a cybernetic age that has been reshaping the way we communicate. Marshall Mc. Luhan expresses this idea clearly in The Medium is the Massage, “our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other.” The complex systems of network through which we communicate have homogenized our society. This homogenization has created a general public also commonly known as the mass audience, “the public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today, the mass audience can be used as a creative, participating force.” New media has changed the structural order of our society and thus has transformed our interaction with space as the audience identifies with the media.
ReplyDeleteSources:
-Nichols, Bill. "The Age of Cybernetic System." The NewMediaReader. By Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. N. Print.
-McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko, 2001. Print.
Although I believe that is important to recognize that mass audience is a direct response to new media. I would like to further analyze how the audience perceives the information it encounters on cybernetic systems. I think that although it is important to show how cybernetic systems have reshaped our environment and has created the mass audience, it is important to talk about the information that this audience has access to. When reading Krakauer’s narrative, I realized that my perception of Everest was shaped by the writer’s voice. This made me think of Walter Benjamin’s argument on film. He states, “the audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera.” I then grew conscious of how Krakauer forced me to read Into Thin Air through a specific lens. While I initially thought that I was reliving the 1996 original expedition to Everest, I realized that I only had access to an individual’s recollection of the event. The expedition had thus lost its aura, as I didn’t have access to the original story. My initial perception of Into Thin Air arose from my necessity “to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly.” (223,Walter Benjamin.) I believe that although new media has brought the information closer to its audience, it is important to realize that the narratives or visual recollections that we have access to, are reproductions and we only are able to visualize a partial reality. The commercialization of Everest arises from the audience’s belief that new media has broken all the spatial boundaries. It is essential to recognize that our environment has only been virtually overcome.
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