This may be old news already but guess what, in this new age of social media and sharing stuff online, everything that happened more than 5 minutes ago is old news. There is much speculation on who Banksy is, how his identity is still a secret, whether of not he is more than one person, was this him? The fact that in this day and age, it’s possible for such a high profile individual to not be known (assuming he’s not actually Robin Cunningham) is almost unfathomable, but then again huge commercial airliners can disappear out of thin air, too, so who knows? Banksy’s identity is not important to me, but what is, is his (or it could feasibly be her) ability to conjure up such a media storm using well paced stencils with a wider meaning than the image itself. One of his more recent pieces, dubbed “Mobile lovers,” was removed and has caused a slight row as to who owns the piece and whether or not street art should remain on the street. Again, I’m less concerned with this but more interested in the message behind the artwork.
You cannot go anywhere these days without seeing people staring at their mobile phones/devices, and the Mobile Lovers piece is an obvious extension of this statement. Whilst this isn’t necessary a huge problem for people do deal with, it is creating cracks in our social fabric. I have no statistics to back this up, but its very likely the last thing people may do before they hit the hay is check their phone and then as soon as they wake up, its the phone they turn to (especially if it serves as their alarm clock, too). Why is this a problem? Perhaps it’s not, but take a look around – more and more folk use their pocket internet package to listen to music, take photos, instant message, send emails and browse the web. This is a weakness that is changing the way people interact, and Banksy’s recent stencil sums this up in a not so subtle way. It’s likely that there will be a Mobile Free market created for those who wish to escape this ever connected world. Throughout civilization, people have had to fight for their freedom and whilst all this technology at your fingertips does allow for many things to be possible, it is also getting to the point that we are being progressively chained to the web.
It is an interesting coincidence – the world wide web, where the web concept was presumably used to describe the multiple layers of connectivity and access caused by a global IT infrastructure. Most “real life” webs have spiders attached to them, and when an unsuspecting insect lands on their sticky fabric, not only are you trapped, but they’re paid a visit by aforementioned spider. No one really wants that visit to happen. The term “spider” is used to describe web crawlers, which can traverse the web and discover things on their journey. Lets hope the word wide web is not in actual fact a trap for some form of proverbial spider. I digress from the Artwork slightly here, but next time you’re in a pub/bar/drinking establishment and the conversation stops, instead of taking out your phone to see whats going on, look up and take a look at how many people are looking at their phones.
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