The Present Tense To Oversee

As an initial reaction to the Laurie Anderson piece " The Language of the Future" I am drawn to the image she displays of the girl with the "digital" language. This is where my connection begins and ends because Anderson is not speaking to me in this piece. I am not her intended audience and far from it, because I am a member of that language of the future, though it is my present. Being born in this "digital" age I am disconnected from the point she is trying to make.

She draws you in with the apparently soothing but dominating masculin voice of the narrator explaining the horrific uncertainty of a plane falling from the sky. For a story with this initial power one would assume the set up would continue to build and grow from this point of power to some clarity. This is not what happens in "The Language of the Future." Instead Anderson moves to slow down and abstract her words as if to replicate the digital nature of the language with switches "on again, off again."

In this formula I am pushed out of Anderson's sphere of influence. The impact seems to have floated over my head or maybe I just floated right past her point seeing as I am imbedded and was born into the digital existence she tries so hard to express. Her "language of the future" becomes for me and my contemporaries...the language of the present.