Many have complained about the journalistic coverage of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370. The 24 hour news cycle has gone big on conjecture and rumour, with experts in no way connected to the investigation coming on air to speculate on their thoughts and opinions. The reporting has reached near hysteria levels, reminiscent of the summer shark attack reporting back in 2001.
No trace of the plane has been found, little information has been confirmed, and the majority of passengers were not American: all factors that would typically predict little coverage by U.S. media. Despite this, the American media and the public have been widely fixated on the disappearance of the Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew.
What explains the unusual levels of coverage is that for the average viewer this story is, at its core, about the role of technology in our lives, not an airplane, and not even the passengers. In a world in which the average viewer can't fathom traveling to grocery store undetected by GPS, convinced that the NSA is listening to their every call, and a soldier in control of a drone is able to kill a target from thousands of miles away, the notion that anything as large as an aircraft can simply disappear is deeply shocking. The idea that 239 people could be untraceable is unnerving. As much as citizens are concerned about the fact that we can't seem to go anywhere without anyone noticing, there is also security in knowing that someone can always come to your aid.
Fundamentally, Americans feel so wired and connected to the grid that the idea one can fall off it is both exhilarating and terrifying. That there are areas of the world that are completely inaccessible seems foreign over a hundred years after the closing of the frontier, challenging deeply held and fundamental assumptions about modern society. We take pervasive electronic surveillance and the intrusion of technology into our lives as an immutable fact--regulating and setting limits on these developments has been dismissed as fantasy outside the realm of possibility, and yet the disappearance of MH 370 demonstrates that these technologies are not yet so pervasive and fixed that we don't have the opportunity as a society to decide what their limits or expansions should be.
The opening of what some have dubbed the electronic frontier, with its restructuring of communication and society, and the tension between freedom and control inherent to technology was supposed to mean that we were in a new era in which we had mastered control of the physical terrain. The revelation that there are still physical limitations to the reach of these technologies suggests there is still time to address what their roles and limits should be not just in areas to which these technologies have not been extended, but also where they have already been accepted into the routines of our daily lives.
The disappearance of flight MH 370 is a very real tragedy for the passengers, crew and families involved, and we need to not lose sight of that. Wild speculation and rumour don't help. Yet the story also opens the opportunity for a productive dialogue about what it means to live in a truly connected society. We are still sorting out the role of technology in society and human lives, and we still have decisions to make. Let's also not lose sight of that opportunity.
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