Shakespeare’s first performed plays occurred in the late 16th century, the colour television was first demonstrated in 1928, the first YouTube video (‘Me at the zoo’, uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim) was released approximately 23 years ago, and the modern social media titan, TikTok, was created approximately 10 years ago. The final marked an important, dangerous and disquieting epoch in entertainment. Though the claim that human attention span has dropped under that of a goldfish remains an incontrovertibly proven fallacy, in the past 20 years alone, the average amount of time a person can spend focused on a task digitally has plummeted from two and a half minutes to just 47 seconds. 47 seconds before we check the time, fiddle with our phones and lose our train of thought. Addiction to short-form content as such has greatly contributed to this collapse. To put it plainly, attention is a digital drug. It harnesses mass amounts of political, economic and social sway. For...
IBRAHIM CHAUDRY The immediate international and government reaction after witnessing the devastating intentional destruction of cultural sites, libraries and ancient architecture by terrorism in Mosul and Palmyra throughout the last decade seems straight-forward and inevitable: outrage mixed with defiance. However, when assessing whether an attempt should be made to reconstruct Ancient Greek architecture, often damaged through Ottoman Empire weaponry, as was the case with the Parthenon in 1687, the response is significantly more complicated; the dilemma of satisfying the aesthetic appeal for tourists exploring beautiful architecture with the archival appeal for historians is difficult to overcome, all whilst trying to ensure revenue is maximised and costs minimised. The merits of any reconstruction project can only be judged on its initial purposes. Assuming that the process isn’t being undertaken to urgently prevent further damage to a sculpture or building, the three general aim...