Another round of bombs - and hyper-reality

Another series of explosions have occured in the London Underground. I was reading in my student-cell as usual, far from harms way.

But now I am listening to BBC London's breaking news coverage. And I am already dizzy. The massive media race to report new news, fresh experience from 7/7 and listeners phoning in with miniscule details about seing a fire engine really adds to the feeling of hyper-reality. The first mobile-phone pictures of people walking in a line is already out and journalists are smirking to get eye witnesses to call in.

Reality is out there. I can see the police helicopters from my window. But because of the heavy media presence from my little radio and the internet it trancends reality, the four blasts themselves, and are now spinning into an existence of their own. It is almost as if reality in the first degree has only been experienced by the people around the blast-sites, the rest of us are quickly building our own reality. The French sociologist Baudrillard first described that phenomenon around the 1991 Gulf War.

I recon it is quite human - especially in a big city like this. But it all just gets a bit absurde, with journalists reporting nothing as if it was significant news and repeating each other and citizens calling in with more nothing to get their share of the action. And all the speculation and rumours spinning faster and faster.

I just hope that no-one is seriously injured. The rest is just ambulance-chasing.