"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.

Comments

Technology is the symptom, surely?

[Paul Crowley]

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.
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Reference for those new to the concept.

[peterb]

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!

This is tiresome...

[Enoch Root]

You know, I get tired of this same old speech. I bet they said the same thing about the television. Why, since the television was invented, families don't sit together trying to relieve intense boredom by faking an interest in senseless chatter!

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."

Technology is the enabler, not the changer

[Victor Danilchenko]

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.

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Nothing new

[jabber]

The article hits on some significant points, but offers nothing new, really.

It's been stated, here on /. and all over the thinking person's media, that we are becoming a 'sound byte' culture.

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.