Response to the Digital Divide

Bishop talks about our complicated relationship with the new digital technology in the current state as a “troubling oscillation between intimacy and distance” as well as “propos[ing] an incommensurability between our doggedly physiological lives and the screens to which we are glued.” In my opinion, these sentiments can be refuted more than she seems to admit as she doesn’t support this with any other points. There seems to be a more conscious level of oversharing in certain aspects of social media that close the gap from intimacy and distance, leaving people that a person could not have met in their day-to-day lives to see personal and intimate blurbs sent into the ether. She also makes it seem like people cannot relate their lives to a screen where there is an abundance of information, data, etc. where one could find relatable topics, people, ideas, and more that can fit into or apply to our own personal experiences.

Bishop also seems to have a cynical idea of how the digital could be a demise of visual art as a whole just because she doesn’t think we are using it in a way that explores the medium in an artistic sense. It seems like she has no hope that any other artists could come along and change our perception of the digital, and even not really acknowledging how people she said worked well in the digital could change the digital within art. She seems too cynical and hopeless even with no real reason to be worried at this moment within the Art World.