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"Is Technology Unplugging Our Minds?"
Peter Herz writes "Salon has published an article on the effects that technology and "speeding things up" is having on our lives and humanity in general. " Thoughtful piece, playing off of three recent books - Katz's recent Cyberclysm piece deals with much of the same issue.
I personally think that what technology has changed is the interaction, and levels of interaction between ppl, instead of having to wait for the post office to send a letter i can communicate instantly with friends and family. Yes it affects my life, but i think that's a good thing
May the forces of evil be confused on the way to your inbox.
The problem identified here seems to be a lack of free time to enjoy the good things in life. The dependence on technology - like having conversations on a cellphone while on the move - seems to be a timesaving measure. It may be a symptom, but it's not the cause. Throw away the phone, and your life would be worse, not better.
What we need is a society that values pleasure, and places less emphasis on paid work. Sadly I suspect that's some distance away.
--
Xenu loves you!
This topic was discussed (in painstaking detail) in Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. I'm not sure what else there is to say about it after that!
Heck, I bet they said that about the automobile and the radio. I bet someone once said that about fire, darnit.
Ten years ago, I would never have been able to chat in real time with a guy in Japan, or hear the original composition of a Russian musician in MP3. I had to look to biased papers and magazines to get my information, and keeping in touch with distant friends required buying stamps and taking a stroll to the post office, then wait a month.
Yes, there is always a (small) price to pay for technology. By providing us with an easier path, it can also lead to laziness and abuse. But I'm tired of the Luddite speech that technology is all evil and has cut us from our human roots.
Technology is never responsible for that. The people misusing it are.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
In the course of conceiving this paragraph, I checked my e-mail three times and fired off four responses. I took a phone call, visited a few Web sites -- simultaneously, I might add, on two computers -- and perused some posts on an online bulletin board. I snuck a peek at the latest news wires, gobbled some take-out Thai food, read a press release. I did this all while switching back and forth between two Internet radio stations, which I listened to through headphones.
:-)*
This paragraph doesn't seem right.
He said he did all of those things *while conceiving that very paragraph*.
Umm, wouldn't doing all of that be *part* of writing it. I do a lot of things simultaneously (actually it's more of a task-switching mechanism in my brain) but I don't go quite that nuts, even when programming
This guy is falling into a common journalistic trap: going overboard in an attempt to prove a point. A point I, personally, am not worried about. Knowledge is a joy, I crave it.
It's like the local news stations putting "spin" on stories. Embellishing boring items on slow days. I saw a 5 minute bit on a local station (which I despise, btw) about a traffic light in a very low traffic area that briefly kept the red light on when it went green. They waited until the end to say that no accidents ensued. Really, I've seen really dumb people, but none of them were *that* dumb (with the exception of these NTV people that did the story).
Maybe I'm too cynical.
Geez!
NT is based on the premise that anyone who can manipulate a mouse can administer a system. Huh?!?
Sunday morning, I'm listening to an inernet radio
station. The host is speculating about things
going on in the world. While he speculates, I'm
running searches on the topics he brings up.
I'm able to keep up with him no problem. A few
years ago I would have had to take notes and hit
the library over the next few days.
Same thing during the Kosovo "war". Talking to
people in Europe on IRC. I'm researching what
they are saying, real time.
It's great.
It merely allows us to plumb ourselves deeper. It is ourselves we ought to be wary of, not some technology bogey-man.
Those who used to stagnate in front of TVs, now stagnate in front og computers; those who never read a good book in their lives, still don't; those whose lives where a whirlwind of getting somewhere and doing something without having time to stop and smell the flowers, still do it -- wether it's cellphones, those fancy horseless carriages, makes no difference; lastly, those who used to think, still do it as well.
People are so eager to blame everything around for the perceived worsening of humanity -- but the always heard that 'in the old times, things were better': we heard it before computers, we heard it before cars, through the ages the mantra has remained the same: Things suck because of these newfangled doodads, the new generation does not appreciate the finer things in life, it's all the new stuff that is at fault!
Bullshit. All the bad stuff we see around us, is what was inside us from the beginning -- we simply refuse to see it, because it would damage our flattering self-image. Technology does not make people worse -- but our own creations allow us to express our innermost desires in a wider and wider variety of ways. We are our own worst enemy, and our own best friend -- and we have no-one to blame or praise but ourselves.
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
We have had this theme echo through various phases of history.
....machines do not control us.
The answer is, predictably, a boring "Yes".
When the Industrial Revolution came upon us, there were visions of machines that ran non-stop, vomiting steam, controlling all human activity. Well, that has happened. However, the machines did not really control us in the 1920s.
Similarly, there were visions of calculating artificial brains controlling us in the 1960s. Novels were written. Philosophers pontificated about how "computers were taking over". Yes, we do have FAA software and traffic systems regulating how our airplanes land and cars go through the freeways, but
Now we have morons predicting how our majestic powerful computers are going to control everything.
Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. I personally would like to see the credentials of these people. "What is it doing to our souls?"
It's making mine emit a big yawn. Go watch some movies. Try coming up with a real article if you want readers to click those "hits" your editors want.
Yes, we all have the pressure to seem to be a visionary. But please...don't come up with crap like this to justify dramatic gee-whiz 21st century futuristic media.
L.
The article hits on some significant points, but offers nothing new, really.
/. and all over the thinking person's media, that we are becoming a 'sound byte' culture.
It's been stated, here on
Educators and clinicians brand more and more children each year with the stigma of "Attention Deficit Disorder", some with the added zinger of "Hyperactive". But what they don't realize is that our culture and lifestyle not only drive them to be this way, they are demanding of such tendencies.
A child that shifts focus frequently, can not handle a 45 minute math class, but would do well at the author's openning paragraph. Consider it.
Further, with seeing news blurr by at 8 seconds per item, with commercials every 8 minutes, how can a kid these days be expected to pay attention for longer than that? How can they not think that this is what is expected of them?
The author (Gleick by proxy) decries the loss of the symphony because radio stations only play the first (most popular) movement. Everyone knows the openning bars of Beethoven's 5th, but who can actually recognize the 3rd movement? Even NPR has to cater to the whims of it's clientelle. It's a matter of funding - you keep your client happy by playing music they like.
As the pace at which information is presented increases, the depth to which it is available decreases. Deep knowledge is what separates the expert from the amateur. Depth and breadth are mutually exclusive given finite time. The gaining of 'deep knowledge' requires a time commitment, and a discipline over our access to the flurry of information that surrounds us.
If we do not exhibit this discipline, we have only shallow knowledge, and are disposable by our culture (full of others like us). If we exercise this discipline, we risk missing out on some shallow information that is significant in the context of the fast moving info-stream. We risk becoming dated and out-of-touch.
The 'instinctive' ability to be selective about information, is quickly becoming a survival skill for the information age.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you get used to." - Tool
Pondering while trying to look busy at the office this morning (while attempting to look busy. . . listening to a CD, checking e-mail, and browsing three different windows). . .
Not necessarily something I agree with 100%, but there are small bits that hook into my psyche in ways that are both familiar and uncomfortable.
I can speak for nobody else, but my life revolves quite literally on the pinion of my electronic information. You people reach me only as electrons the vast majority of the time. Likewise for most of my other friends; both those I grew up with and those I have yet to meet. Entertainment comes piped across the coaxial network and through the television and in through my cablemodem.
Those times when I have no access are, quite literally, withdrawal. Imagine not having the ability to speak with your friends and family, coupled with not having your car (or taxi, or public transit, etc) in order to shop or pick up a newspaper.
Am I advocating prostrating oneself to informational immersion? On many levels, yes. Is getting unplugged occasionally worthwhile? Absolutely. But I -want- to have the ability to bathe myself in information streams and cull what's salient to -me- from the flood. If that choice is made for me, aye or nay, then I get hostile. Choice is engendered by having options, and having this myriad information available at the click of a mouse is the best way of keeping that ability viable.
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
I think in general the huge technology boom has been a good thing. More jobs out on the marketplace (part of the good economy we've got right now), more security (keep a cell phone for when your car breaks down, etc), more communication (how many letters did you write vs the amount of email you write now?)...
/.ers) and I'm a technophile but still, it's not all great and glorious like a lot of the media is making it out to be. There is some "bad" mixed in with the "good".
But of course it's got its bad points too. I don't read books nearly as much as I used to when I was in high school (and earlier). Kids these days spend their time chatting online rather than attempting to get real life friends, and doing real life stuff with their friends. Oh yeah how much more money in my budget do I need to spend to get "connected"... $50 for the cell phone, $50 for the cable modem/cable tv... money that would've been spent elsewhere 5 years ago.
Or how about the college students who flunk out of school because of internet addiction? Without the internet, these students probably would've still been in school. I remember freshman year (94-95) when I discovered the text irc at school. It was hard not to be tempted to skip classes because of an interesting conversation. I probably would've spent more time at the rec center or the library had I not discovered this other entertainment.
Of course I get paid to be a computer geek (like probably a majority of
Intelligent writers have been talking about this for years. One I particularly like is Steve Talbott, who publishes the NETFUTURE newsletter. He was also the article of a very well regarded book on the subject called "The Future Does Not Compute". I disagree with much of what he says (particularly his New Age nature worshiping), but it's always a good read. Especially important are the writings on computers in education.
The following essays he's written should give you a feel for the flavor of NETFUTURE:
Why Timesaving Devices Don't Save Time
and
The Principle of Technological Deceit
Gleick, on the other hand, rocks, and I enjoyed his book.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
changing social and mental equilibrium of progress as "damage"
that needs to be fixed...
Shenk, Gleick and their fellow naysayers would have you believe that the unprecedented access to information in modern life is somehow destructive. These writers are playing on the average citizen's ignorance and consequent distrust of technology. What we're actually experiencing is a cultural shift as we pass from a society with limited access, to one with instant access, to information. Kids who grow up during this time have no difficulty assimilating the lifestyle pace of which these writers are so frightened.
The profusion of information channels only accentuates the importance of attention -- no longer are you limited to what the daily paper puts in front of you. Find out yourself whatever you want from a multitude of sources. We are already living in a partial attention-based economy. Websites and television stations compete with bloody knives for our eyes. Politics becomes a day parade of celebrities with unbeatable name recognition.
Perhaps, in longing for a simpler way of life, Shenk and Gleick etc simply do not realize that it also means a less informed, less participatory lifestyle. Bottom line, if it's too much for you to handle, turn off the machine. I have no sympathy for these writers and I suppose, for them, ignorance is truly bliss./
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
It's called time management.
While there are so many more things pulling at you for your time, you must focus and remain commited to whatever goals you have. After a small tout of internet addiction in 94-95, I've learned to manage my time and goals. Stay focused! Fit the first time (excluding encyclopedias) we have all this info at our finertips, and lets face it, we can't know it all. Choose wants important to you. Sacrifices to be made.
But definately wear sunscreen.
Someone else said that this territory was covered by Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock", basically discussing the question of whether we can handle "information overload". This book was written about 30 years ago, and while it's a bit dated, it still applies today. It doesn't have a doomish alarmist feel to it either.
This article wasn't too bad. Advertising saturation is a key point. The cliche goes "its not the technology, it's how you use it." I agree with that to a point but the technologies that are developed are not deveolped just for technology's sake. Lately the net has seen a lot of e-commerce growth.
The do everything but say that a lot of the problems present are due to our economic system itself. But that doesn't suprise me, you generally can't get mainstream approval by questioning capitalism our our government.
Communication technology is a great thing. It's a bad thing when it is turned into a one-way marketing and impulse buying system. I think that outcome is a ppredictable one, just look at how companies work. I say this in every post but it applies to almost everything I write about. Companies are about money and nothing else. With all the fierce competition among net startups, and established companies looking to expand, the internet seems to be expanding into one big advertisment.
It boils down to how we allow the internet to be used. If it is simply a marketing tool, we all lose. If it is more like a forum such as slashdot, we all win. Do we want dumb consumers or informed citizens?
The books reviewed here didn't look like they had much to say. I think a lot of these writers just ride the current wave of fear or euphoria to sell books.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been worrying about things my entire life. Any memory I have, I've had things at the same time that worried me. Did the report I did on tigers in the second grade have any substantial effect on my life, and therefore justify the worry I gave it? Probably not.
Does that change anything? Of course not. I thought it was extremely important at the time, and it caused quite a bit of stress (rarely will you hear the term "stress" with "second grade," but there ya go). Now my worries seem much bigger--the major essay I have due on the 15th, the pain I feel sometimes in my left hand that I think is mild carpal tunnel syndrome, what the fuck I'm going to do with my CS degree when I get out of college, will I even get that CS degree--but you can't make someone understand that what they think is important really isn't when they can't grasp what it is you worry about. The same goes for 40 year olds who look at high school kids and think they have a care free life--they don't, high school is very stressful.
Even if the president has to worry about "more important" matters than I do, we can still have the same stress levels about what we worry about.
This is the exact same thing. During the "information age," we're looking back ten years, a generation, 100 years, however long, and saying to our selves "Life was so much simpler then." In many respects, yeah, but on the other hand, did it make any difference in how much and what a person had to think about? No, I really don't think it does. A farmer 100 years ago probably had just the same level of stress (think about all of the things a farmer has to worry about: will his crops fail, can he feed his family, will he have any surplus to sell, if he doesn't have any surplus where will the money come from, etc.) that we do now. We adapt.
In ten years, a generation, or 100 years, people will look back at 1999 and say "Gee, they had it so easy, they didn't have any important issues to worry about." Every generation does it. These theories are just a more articulate way of saying "Life is complicated now, it was much simpler in the past."
Thing is, there is no such thing as a simple life.
James Billington, a Library of Congress librarian and author pointed out in a commencement address at American University that early on, the TV was lauded as having fantastic potential for education. Now it's the babysitter.
A similar thing is happening on the internet -- less information content and more eye candy -- and it's not just because the marketing monkeys are pushing it. Those of the mode want it, or it wouldn't be that way. THAT is capitalism. The means that people employ to make the money (the capitalists) are manifestations not of their own rotting souls, but of the tastes of the general public. In the words of George Carlin (explaining why we have such terrible politicans to choose from) "Maybe it's the public that sucks."
I agree that the internet stands to be better than the TV, as it is not restricted to finite channels controlled by marketers, or governments, appealing to or controlling the majority. It can be this way only if people are free to build any sort of webpage they want, i.e. laissez-faire. I suppose capitalism has become a bad word, but its real meaning is the closer ideology to the spirit of the internet.
It should be kept in mind, however, that such Industrial Age economic/cultural terms will cease to have much meaning in a few decades. We are on the crest of Alvin Toffler's third wave. As Peter Drucker pointed out in a piece in October's Atlantic Monthly, it's likely that we will need to live in the Age of Information for a few decades before life with computers, biotechnology, etc. will have so shaped our thinking that our cultural institutions evolve into those which will be characteristic of the Third Age. Toffler predicts that many of these institutions (economics, government, family, etc) will be more similar to the first Age (the agrarian age) than the second (the Industrial age). Eric Raymond's essays are particularly interesting to me for this reason--he likens many aspects of the evolving culture to forgotten philopsophies. The collection of analyses really suggest a movement towards thinking and acting in ways which transcend "capitalism".
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Once in a while you get shown the light,
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Once in a while you get shown the light,
In the strangest of places, when you look at it right -
COERSION is a rather interesting read. Not so much because of the subject matter, but because of the deconstructionist analysis of Rushkoff it provides. Namely a portrait of a man who got caught up in all the Wired buzz of the Great Generation of chaotic rough'n'ready cyberpunks and the world they were going to make, proceeded to tell advertising companies about it(for thousands of dollars an hour), and how this generation thinks, and now is acting all horrified because *gasp* THE ADVERTISERS USED THIS INFORMATION TO SELL PRODUCTS!
So, rather than fess up to the full realization that he was a completely niave chucklehead drunk on the promise of New Media and the notion that corporate america will never adjust to the cultural and technological changes that have occured this decade, he drones on with a translucent mask of objective distance about how bad and evil those advertisers and manipulators were for using the information he sold them.
They're advertisers. Adaptation is their job. You got your $7.5k/hour, shut yer whining.
Still, the Salon article itself is nicely tempered, in contrast to Katz's earlier article and any of these books. Yes, there's more data flying about, but you can control your own input. Sure, TV ads are getting fast'n'furious, but why do you need to watch TV anyway?
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
We're all being slowly, but surely, convenienced out of existence.
The big companies can afford to (mass) produce a conveniently available alternative. They can't do the same for specialized products, because then they incur the same costs as the small business. It is, as you suggest, a matter of profit - simple economics. And as long as the majority of us chooses to save a buck, rather than be patrons of our local small business, the trend will continue.
Ultimately, the skills needed to do anything will be held only by the big companies. (I know, I'm naysaying, but only to make the point)
I'm originally from Poland. There, families typically make a day-trip out of going to an area forest to pick edible mushrooms. There's a whole variety out there that is usable as garnish, flavoring, condiments...
In the US, the only mushroom that people know is the store bought little round one - and the very gourmet Shittake and Portabella. And for all these are worth, Americans don't know a Shittake from a Portabella from Nightshade on sight. It's only the printed label that makes the distinction. (Though, to their credit, a small segment of the population knows enough to spot the psychoactive variety that the Europeans see as poisonous.)
This is not a shot at Americans. It is simply more convenient to not have a knowledge of mushrooms. It's not a needed skill. But what about other skills. Brewing your own beer? Darning your own socks? In a society of convenience, where mega-corporations provide cheap, disposable goods, it is easy to simply buy into the convenience.
It's easy to abdicate power, but it's damn hard to get it back later. This holds for consumerism, security and human rights, everything.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.