Before we consider the effects of the noise of the Machine Age on the Social Imagination, let us first contemplate the concept and reality of the Machine Age. The following is an excerpt from an article about the Machine Age in America.
During the 23 years between the world wars, the United States experienced an explosive growth of mechanized industry and commodity production. The machine, not a new concept to the 20th century, was unleashed to its fullest promise. “The Machine Age in America 1918–1941” documents the unbalanced optimism and enthusiasms the machine excited.
The nation’s love affair with mass production and its correlates—freedom, power, affluence, and rationalized living—was simply one strand in the tight knot of conflicting messages generated by new technologies and materials. The idea of unimpeded promise, of the magical properties of the machine, is conveyed by this exhibition, but little else about the complex psychology and mythology of machinery is unraveled.
In the early 20th century, the machine evoked a sense of magic. Heaving industrial components and operations were set into motion by strange, invisible properties, and most laymen could not comprehend the origins of this new power. The idea of magic produced two different sets of responses: mechanization as a source of entrancement, and as something distant, disturbing.
Excitement was undoubtedly the dominant cultural sentiment... the inherent tension and ambivalence of progress. ~ https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/198702/the-machine-age-in-america-1918-1941-62592
The article pointed is not strictly dedicated to the Machine Age as a detailed historical chronology necessarily or the noise of it but rather the art that came out of that time as seen in the above illustration by Morris Graves. The article, as it discusses art, does however capture the feeling and the mania commotion of progress that exploded at the beginning of the Machine Age and its continued impact.
Given that kind of beginning, a mania of progress has ensued as a motion filled 'social' phenomenon. Instead of being in a place people are now consumed with doing in a place. This has created what I like to call a 'commotion' in the social imagination that has resulted in 'noise' and worse yet, residual noise in the social reality - the Social Imagination.
Indeed out of that new commotion in the social imagination a feeling of power was grasped by all who saw the lure of it. It was a kind of magic that seemed to magically arise from the mass production assembly line that heavy industry provided. It was magically massive and in the massiveness... tons of false promises of utopia.
Cities became hubs of man and machine living together side by side. Noise battling noise with the use of machines with man at the helm. But that did not pull back any throttles or apply any brakes causing anyone to hesitate as there was an incredible diversity of chimney towers rising up into the sky as if to taunt the maker of heaven and earth.
Though the Machine Age sounds like an evolutionary aspect of humanity it has had its deadly downside in my opinion... escalating into a darker future. Man is in bed with noise. Not surprisingly, noise has been sited to cause ill health effects. It dilutes and steals natural sounds that belong here: bird calls, leaves rustling, brooks trickling, breezes drifting and rain drops splashing. It keeps us on our toes, it rushes in and pours out its vile cacophony. Ironically, in order to avoid hearing certain noises that keep us up we just add more by using sound machines.
Strange or not so strange, man feels most dominant when he or she speaks the loudest (as do politicians and virtue signaling celebrities), and there are those who feel powerful when they peel out (burn rubber) in their sport car or riding on their motorcycle and don't forget about those who think that everyone in the neighborhood wants to hear their favorites tunes on the boombox...
More than that, more than idiot individuals making noise on purpose just to piss people off there are tons of daily noises: traffic noise, construction noise, social media noise, logistic noise or transport noise, airplane noise, vacation noise, work noise, restaurant noise, emergency noise and war noise... man is so worried about humanity's contribution to greenhouse gas he forgot about the noise of it. The effects on the social imagination are grievous... and until the noise goes away... it will only get worse.
Personally, I hate all the noise, noise, noise and noise...
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