GNST500:
Brave New Media World?
In light of our in-class discussion of January 26 on the possible impacts of advanced multimedia technology on our cognitive abilities, to what extent do you think New Media might be bringing about a kind of Brave New World scenario if, instead of or in addition to helping enlighten us, the technology is actually making us less functional in certain ways?
Beyond a wholesale (catastrophic) change in our access to and use of this technology, is a slower, “saner” pace world even possible?
For a good primer on this, watch a few segments of the PBS Front Line doc called Digital Nation: Driven to Distraction
(You could/should now watch this documentary).
2010-01-28 @ 5:50 PM:
As much I think there might be something unprecedented going on right now in terms of cognitive evolution, I think a lot of it can actually be attributed to this: The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.
That link is to a great article that essentially outlines how correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. Also check out the comments; though they are plentiful, and some are just plain wrong, a lot of them are exactly right—even to the point of proving the original article wrong in some senses.
In any case, if our rampant technology is in fact outgrowing our physiological ability to keep pace, then I see that as some pretty suggestive proof that we humans (and perhaps all life) are eventually destined to overcome our material bodies in favour of some more ‘direct’ form of existence. The example I always like to bring up is how our communicative technologies have consistently evolved in a direction that makes it easier to read the minds of others, which is to say, ease communication away from physical or linguistic intermediaries and into some form of just (better) ‘knowing’ what another is willing to tell you. Present day technology and mechanization certainly seems to be facilitating this, issues of authenticity aside.
But like I hinted at in class, I think the next generation(s) of communicators will come to see our current model of ‘authenticity’ as archaic and ill-suited to their world of rapid-fire interchange and meta-derivative/derived culture. In other words, that ‘authenticity’, that sense of presence and ‘truth’ that we see as being lacking in technologized media, is really ever-present—it just ‘looks’ different. Chances are we’ll have to learn to accept it rather than the other way around…
2010-01-29 @ 1:30 AM:
…and now that I’ve watched the film, I feel even more naïve for pretty much simply pointing out what was already said.
All the same, by about half-way through the video, I was about ready to concede that technology is indeed corrupting our intellect to an irreversible extent—and I still don’t feel the hapless optimism of the last half fully offsets the fairly grave implications of never being able to pursue an idea ‘deeply’. For instance, the reason I decided to watch the video when I did was because I’d just finished writing a paragraph for a paper and felt I needed to (read: deserved to) pause for a break. Quite seriously, the characterization of the ‘small-portion writer’ depicted in the video is exactly me. I sincerely felt both embarrassed and foolish seeing myself exposed so fully, so convincingly.
But I still can’t help but dodge this feeling that such a shift toward the fleeting isn’t just inevitable, it’s entirely natural. Take, say, the most damning evidence of cognitive ‘de-evolution’ in that piece—the aforementioned inability to think ‘deeply’ or to think critically through a complex idea or problem. I would posit that while we might indeed be losing the ability to do so individually, we are making up for it in spades with our ability to collect and collaborate with others (or even merely other sources of information); so we’re evolving to a new kind of ‘deep’ thinking, one that derives its gravitas from a whole network or system [of information] rather than a point or piece in isolation.1 Of course dependencies become an issue here, but such is always the case when dealing with complex structures; the minute becomes magnified given how all the parts are so finely nuanced and interrelated. (Chaos theory and computer programming come to mind here.)
Somewhat tangentially, we’d also be naïve to think traditional ‘deep’ thinkers can’t/won’t also thrive in this new era, given how their ostensibly better (or, given the context, preserved) cognitive abilities would be all the more called upon to garner valuable insight from these global wells of information just waiting to be understood/organized/communicated. And given how these wells seem to be at the core of today’s most cutting-edge business models, it seems only too likely that this ‘dying’ skill set will itself see a substantial growth (i.e. even deeper thinkers)—albeit in a relatively sparse population. No, wait, those are called computers. Shit!
- I would even go so far as to predict that those increased ‘red zones’ on the brain activity map correspond to areas of the brain that deal with functions like comparison and reduction, that is to say, that translate plentiful specificity into fundamental linkages
N.B.: don’t forget to check out the aforementioned documentary.
