Margaret Morse suggests that we are increasingly drawn into a state of “distracted” attention, in which there is a “partial loss of touch with the here-and-now.” Pointing to the centrality of the mall, the freeway and television to our lives, she suggests that actions we perform habitually and semi-automatically (driving, shopping, watching TV) “are the barely acknowledged ground of everyday experience.” How, according to you, does the home or house figure in this state of affairs (assuming you find Morse’s analysis plausible)? Is the home a bulwark against this distracted attention? Or is the modern home itself increasingly being eroded by this distractedness, perhaps through the increasing presence of the social media (Internet, etc) in everyday life?
Margaret Morse’s pivotal essay “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, the Mall, and Television,” reveals one such missed opportunity. In this essay, Morse posits a “fiction effect [...] a partial loss with the here and now, dubbed here as distraction,” through which she unites the inherent cultural formation and experience of freeways, malls, and television.3 Her article details the place of the viewer and the viewer’s perception in these allied spaces of temporal and spatial endlessness, disrupted desire, cultural excess, and displacement.
Over the past 40 years, the Internet has greatly transformed. It has become an ordinary amenity, finding its way into the hands of many users. In North America, 78.6% percent of the population uses the Internet, proving that it has imbedded itself into the lives of many, making it a ‘natural’ necessity. The internet has provided many social media sites that act as a forum for all to connect and communicate with all that have accounts and access. Although it is presence has made it easier to connect with friends, family and colleagues, it would seem as though it has had a negative impact on relationships making them less sentimental than they once were....