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Sep 26

‘Gangnam Style’ and the Birth of a Global Mind

Categories:

Culture, Technology

by Zain Iqbal

Pop culture gone crazy

Whether pop culture makes you either clap for joy or cringe with horror, it’s a social phenomenon that offers insight into the mindset of any given society. While American pop culture has penetrated almost every region of the globe, with items such as Coca-Cola and musicians like Jennifer Lopez easily recognizable among people who may not even share the same language, evolving technology has leveled the playing field.

Now, pop culture icons and brands such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Louis Vuitton, Red Bull, and in the following case Korean pop, or “K-pop,” are part of our global consciousness.

Through the power of technology, K-pop star PSY has taken over the Internet as of late. At last check, his video “Gangnam Style” has received over 284 million views since it was posted on July 15 of this year, and Guinness World Records recognized it as the most “liked” video in YouTube history.

So broadly has “Gangnam Style” penetrated our collective consciousness that it has been parodied by groups such as the Oregon Ducks athletic department, members of the United States Naval Academy, and Minecraft video game users. In a supremely ironic twist, North Korea parodied “Gangnam Style” in order to take a dig at a South Korean politician, even though the country’s populace has little access to the Internet.

“Gangnam Style” is the just the latest example of how technology has disrupted society and and given birth to a global mind, where pop culture and cultural memes pass from one individual to another in real time. Computer book publisher, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media Tim O’Reilly joined the Long Now Foundation in a talk that explained the evolution of communication and how it has created a future that won’t be run by artificial intelligence, but collective intelligence.

Tim O’Reilly: Birth of the Global Mind from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv

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  • mffitzgerald

    The slice of Tim’s talk we’re given is as usual thought-provoking. But what’s striking about Gangnam Style is how much it sounds like American pop. PSY sounds like he’s iterating on LMFAO. In fact, there are already mashups of Gangam Style and LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It.”
    I don’t see how this is an example of a global mind, any more than the fascination with Japan that swept Europe and America in the late 19th century represented a global mind. There’s even the same element of “look at how that unusual culture behaves” to PSY’s popularity popularity, as well.