Is it just me, or isn't this insane?

I've been watching a lot of the TED talks recently, with horror. 'Ideas worth spreading' is their confident catchphrase. I can't help but thinking that many of the ideas would be disastrous if they caught on… and even more worryingly, they are being lauded by TED, hailed as the greatest thoughts of our society, and applauded eagerly by the audiences.

It seemed a good time to focus on this one, in light of the last post which mentioned (not favorably) Google’s Book Search project. Here’s a librarian ecstatically proclaiming that not only CAN we archive all of humanity’s creative works, but we SHOULD… nay, we MUST. At first pass, this fits in well with our neo-liberal mentality, referenced, in fact, by Kahle himself: this belief in the inalienable right of people to information. We shall be liberated by greater access to information!

I think this is a huge lie that we’ve been sold. We are no more liberated by information than we are informed by it. We are addicts to information that, as Postman explains in Amusing Ourselves to Death, is not even particularly interesting or informative. We want and we want, but irrationally so, because we are not made happier, or smarter, by all this information. Imagine if someone were able to consume all these works that the Internet holds (an impossible dream that would drive people crazy in the chase of this will-o-the-wisp). I would think that without any discernment, their intelligence would trend toward mediocre. Compare this to if everyone read all the supposedly ‘great’ works in the world – they would probably get smarter. But this statement is threatening to people, approaching heretical. Censor our archives!? How dare you! Who are you to decide what we keep and what we don’t keep? Who’s to say what might be important to someone else?

The thing is, we can collect anything in the world if we make the criteria ‘something that might be useful at some point in the future to someone.’ As my supervisor quipped, why not go out into the woods and collect all the leaves? We don’t know if they might be useful one day.

It’s painful for us to think of letting some works go, forgotten from the archives of human history. (I think it has to do with fear of our own mortality – that everyone wants to think that part of them is immortal and will be remembered.) But every household does a selective editing of their family history when they save certain items, donate others, and trash the rest. For example, finger paintings and crayon drawings are eventually taken off the refrigerator when the child grows up. Some are thrown away (they really were shit, as difficult as it is for us to admit it, because we love our children), and some of the more impressive ones are kept. Why are we so afraid to do this to our library archives?

This is not really the point. The point is that even if we decided that, yes, we want to keep everything, we would not be able to do this (I don’t care what Kahle says). Kahle seems to think the limiting factor is money. This is very naïve. The limiting factors include 1) our actually limited data storage space (cyberspace is not, in fact, infinite), and 2) the limit of energy we are able to supply to run these data centers (and the environmental costs of doing so). So although we may be able to archive all of the works ever created to date, we are fast-producing more and more. Eventually we won’t be able to keep up with our own data production.

Consider the enormous costs of archiving what we have so far! Google estimates there are 130 million books in the world. And if we multiply that by the approximate CO2 cost of a 300 page digital book, it works out to nearly 300,000 tonnes of CO2, and that’s just for the books! You also have to add all the music and the videos (at considerably greater CO2 cost). And you have to multiply that by multiple copies Kahle (rightfully) proposes we would need, so that our archives don’t go down like the Alexandra Library. Additionally, we need technologies to enable us to access and interact with the web, like Mobile Phones, eReaders, and computers, which all consume virgin materials, emit CO2 during their production and use, and contribute to eWaste.

And there are psychological implications of this as well. Firstly, of course, we have to question the ways in which this enables information pleonexia, and increases our anxiety as we attempt to keep up with the information now available to us (and fears that we don’t know it all!). Furthermore, this promotes the unsustainable notion that we can forever expand into cyberspace, and the false perception that doing so has no real world consequences; and as we become increasingly dependent on cyberspace as storage for everything we value, we are forever consigning ourselves to supplying energy to maintain it, unable to disengage when the environment inevitably compels us to do so. How terrifying it becomes to contemplate the thought of unplugging! The hard truth is that one day we just might have to do that. If we tell ourselves that we need to be connected to this much information in order to be human in this world, we won’t be able to cope without it.

There are obvious objections to what I’m saying, namely that digital alternatives in many ways seem more environmentally friendly. People say, ‘Well, doesn’t a paper book have a greater carbon footprint than a digital book.’ Yes. But paper books come from trees, so if we learned to moderate our consumption of them, they would renew over time (moderation is a difficult but necessary pill for us to swallow). When we store a digital book, we consume non-renewable fossil fuels, which makes them fundamentally unsustainable. So in one sense, cyberspace is unsustainable for the same reason that any fossil fuel-based product is. But there’s another important point, which we can make with the example of a disposable camera. These are awful environmentally. But their costs are easily visible – because we have to pay to use them, and we physically throw them away. In contrast, the digital conceals its environmental costs, and there are no financial incentives for moderation.

My point is that we have to make an informed – and painfully grown up – decision about whether this goal of dumping everything in cyberspace is worth the costs. It certainly isn’t without environmental and psychological costs above and beyond economic ones, so let’s not delude ourselves that it is risk- and cost-free in these respects.

Carr's The Shallows - our plastic minds

A summary of:

Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

(Warning: Internet causes massive brain damage?)

Having read Carr’s first book, Rewiring the World: From Edison to Google, I must say that I am wholly convinced now that Google is a very sinister company. Not only do they aspire to world domination, but they seem to have a highly objectionable vision of what their world would look like, if they got their way. They seem to have no concern for the environmental impacts of their projects, nor for the ethical implications of them, both evidenced by their new baby, the Google Book Search.

More worrying than this is their utter disregard for – and massive devaluation of – the human mind. To them, it is an imperfect machine; and I suppose the fact that their technologies may or may not be damaging it only further proves to them its need for augmentation… or replacement.

But I do care about what’s happening to our minds. And while you are immediately branded a Luddite to say so, I think the Internet may be hurting us. I think there are two kinds of effects this is having on our minds: cognitive impairment (which you would have to weigh against the clear cognitive augmentation is also provides), and damage to our emotional and psychological wellbeing. I shall take these one at a time.

Carr argues – and he is not alone in proposing this – that the Internet is “chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (7). He continues, “Whether I’m online or not, my mind (6) now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (7). Or, stated elsewhere: “Our use of the Internet involves many paradoxes, but the one that promises to have the greatest long-term influence over how we think is this one: the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it” (118). He understands this to be a result of technology’s power over us. He writes that he began to sense that the computer “was more than just a simple tool that did what you told it to do. It was a machine that, in subtle but unmistakable ways, exerted an influence over you. The more I used it, the more it altered the way I worked” (13), so that for example, “In using the word processor, I had become something of a word processor myself” (13). He also cites the interesting case of Nietzsche: when he adopted a kind of typewriter known as a writing ball, his writing style changed perceptibly. A friend of his commented that his “prose had become tighter, more telegraphic. There was a new forcefulness to it, too, as though the machine’s power – its ‘iron’ – was, through some mysterious metaphysical mechanism, being transferred into the words it pressed into the page” (Carr’s words, 18).

But the Internet is not a writing tool. It is a thinking tool. As such, it changes the way we think. Carr muses on his distracted mind, “But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it – and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check e-mail, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected. Just as Microsoft Word had turned me into a flesh-and-blood word processor, the Internet, I sensed, was turning me into something like a high-speed data processor machine a human HAL” (16). This is an interesting way of understanding what I have come to call information pleonexia. Our insatiable desire for information is in a way determined by the technology’s desire for information working through – and using – us.

There is another way of understanding this phenomenon, and that is to look at our neurobiology. Carr spends a great deal of time explaining what is called ‘neuroplasticity’, i.e. the ability of the brain to change and adapt. By studying simpler nervous systems, like that of the large sea slug, biologist Eric Kandel proved how easy it is to alter the brain. Carr writes: Kandel… found that if you touch a slug’s gill, even very lightly, the gill will immediately and reflexively recoil. But if you touch the gill repeatedly, without causing any harm to the animal, the recoiling instinct will steadily diminish. The slug will become (27) habituated to the touch and learn to ignore it. By monitoring slugs’ nervous systems, Kandel discovered that ‘this learned change in behavior was paralleled by a progressive weakening of the synaptic connections’ between the sensory neurons that ‘feel’ the touch and the motor neurons that tell the gill to retract. In a slug’s ordinary state, about ninety percent of the sensory neurons in its gill have connections to motor neurons. But after its gill is touched just forty times, only ten percent of the sensory cells maintain links to the motor cells. The research ‘showed dramatically,’ Kandel wrote, that ‘synapses can undergo large and enduring changes in strength after only a relatively small amount of training” (28).

What’s important for us to understand from this is that it is very possible, in fact very likely, that the Internet is changing the physical structure of our brains. Carr cites some other interesting examples.

· “In 2008, Small and two of his colleagues carried out the first exper-(120)iment that actually showed people’s brains changing in response to Internet use…. / The most remarkable part of the experiment came when the tests were repeated six days later. In the interim, the researches had the novices spend an hour a day online, searching the Net. The new scans revealed that the area in their prefrontal cortex that had been largely dormant now showed extensive activity – just like the activity in the brains of the veteran surfers. ‘After just five days of practice, the exact same neural circuitry in the front part of the brain became active in the Internet-naïve subjects,’ reports Small. ‘Five hours on the Internet, and the naïve subjects had already rewired their brains.’ He goes on to ask, ‘If our brains are so sensitive to just an hour a day of computer exposure, what happens when we spend more time [online]?’” (121)

· “In 2003, a Dutch clinical psychologist named Christof van Nimwegen began a fascinating study of computer-aided learning that a BBC writer would later call ‘one of the most interesting examinations of current computer use and the potential downsides of our increasing reliance on screen-based interaction with information systems.’ Van Nimwegen had two groups of volunteers work through a tricky logic puzzle on a computer…. One of the groups used software that had been designed to be as helpful as possible. It offered onscreen assistence during the course of solving the puzzle, providing visual cues, for instance, to highlight permitted moves. The other group used a bare-bones program, which provided no hints or other guidance (214). / In the early stages of solving the puzzle, the group using the helpful software made correct moves more quickly than the other group, as would be expected. But as the test proceeded, the proficiency of the members of the group using the bare-bones software increased more rapidly. In the end, those using the unhelpful program were able to solve the puzzle more quickly and with fewer wrong moves. They also reached fewer impasses – states in which no further moves were possible – than did the people using the helpful software. The findings indicated, as van Nimwegen reported, that those using the unhelpful software were better able to plan ahead and plot strategy, while those using the helpful software tended to rely on simple trial and error. Often, in fact, those with the helpful software were found ‘to aimlessly click around’ as they tried to crack the puzzle. / Eight months after the experiment, van Nimwegen reassembled the groups and had them again work on the colored-balls puzzle as well as a variation on it. He found that the people who had originally used the unhelpful software were able to solve the puzzles nearly twice as fast as those who had used the helpful software. In another test, he had a different set of volunteers use ordinary calendar software to schedule a complicated series of meeting involving overlapping groups of people. Once again, one group used helpful software that provided lots of on-screen cues, and another group used unhelpful software. The results were the same. The subjects using the unhelpful program ‘solved the problems with fewer superfluous moves [and] in a more straightforward manner,’ and they demonstrated greater ‘plan-based behavior’ and ‘smarter solution paths’” (215).

Notice that the latter of these studies seems to directly contradict Jane McGonigal’s euphoric assessment of the ways in which gaming helps us solve problems. And the former study begs even more urgently, What exactly are we training our brains FOR??? It seems to me that we are training ourselves to think like machines think… which is a futile endeavor, given that we will always be sub-par machines. Why not train our brains to think like better humans? We can excel at that!

Of course, we can’t deny that the Web helps us tremendously in doing very specific kinds of thinking. And we seem excited at the prospect of freeing up some real estate in our brains. But just as we made the mistake of thinking that labor-saving devices would free up time, we made the mistake of thinking that cognitive tools would free up our brains to do more exciting things (see p.181 for evidence of this mistake). I was surprised in particular by the study by James Evans at the University of Chicago, who looked at citations in journals from 1945 to 2005. Carr writes: “He analyzed the citations included in the articles to see if patters of citation, and hence of research, have changed as journals have shifted from being printed on paper to being published online. Considering how much easier it is to search digital text than printed text, the common assumption has been that making journals available on the Net would significantly broaden the scope of scholarly research, leading to a much more diverse set of citations. But that’s not at all what Evans discovered. As more journals moved online, scholars actually cited fewer articles than they had before. And as old issues of printed journals were digitized and uploaded to the Web, scholars cited more recent articles with increasing frequency. A broadening of available information led, as Evans described it, to a ‘narrowing of science and scholarship’. / In explaining the counterintuitive findings in a 2008 Science article, Evans noted that automated information-filtering tools, such as search engines, tend to serve as amplifiers of popularity, quickly establishing and then continually reinforcing a consensus about what information is important and what isn’t” (217). So just because doing something seems easier (I often think how difficult it would be for me to do a PhD without the Internet), that doesn’t make the product better. Perhaps humans are better versions of themselves when they have to struggle toward their goals.

But again, some cognitive functions are undeniably improved by the Web. Carr writes: “While experimental evidence is sparse, it seems only logical that Web searching and browsing would also strengthen brain functions related to certain kinds of fast-paced problem solving, particularly those involving the recognition of patterns in a welter of data” (139). / “Other studies suggest that the kind of mental calisthenics we engage in online may lead to a small expansion in the capacity of our working memory. That, too, would help us to become more adept at juggling data. Such research ‘indicates that our brains learn to swiftly focus attention, analyze information, and almost instantaneously decide on a go or no-go decision,’ says Gary Small. He believes that (139) as we spend more time navigating the vast quantity of information available online, ‘many of us are developing neural circuitry that is customized for rapid and incisive spurts of directed attention’” (Carr, 140). But then he is quick to put these gains in perspective, writing, “…it would be a serious mistake to look narrowly at the Net’s benefits and conclude that the technology is making us more intelligent. Jordan Grafman, head of the cognitive neuroscience unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explains that the constant shifting of our attention when we’re online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively” (140). The thing that I must reconcile in my own research is this: while I am on the one hand bemoaning what the Internet is doing to certain cognitive functions (such as creativity and attention), I am also questioning the goal of cognitive augmentation that underlies computer technology in general. So I am effectively suggesting that we shouldn’t be aiming to improve our cognitive functions. If that’s true, then do I have a right to complain that certain ones seem to be getting weaker? I think I do, actually. It’s the old Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm.

There are three other points to make about neuroplasticity:

1) It would explain why things that are anathema to us initially come to feel like human nature. We literally change. In social psychology terms, this is known as the foot-in-the-door phenomenon; i.e. as we make small concessions, we allow more and more unwanted things through the door. So while we may cringe initially at the thought of ubiquitous computers, they become acceptable through our repeated exposure to them, as our brains change and come to react less and less to this unwanted stimuli (like the sea slug no longer recoiling at touch).

2) As Carr says, “What we’re not doing when we’re online also has neurological consequences. Just as neurons that fire together wire together, neurons that don’t fire together don’t wire together. As the time we spend scanning Web pages crowds out the time we spend reading books, as the time we spend exchanging bite-sized text messages crowds out the time we spend composing sentences and paragraphs, as the time we spend hopping across links crowds out the time we devote to quiet reflection and contemplation, the circuits that support those old intellectual functions and pursuits weaken and begin to break apart. The brain recycles the disused neurons and synapses for other, more pressing work. We gain new skills and perspectives but lose old ones” (120).

3) Given the changeability of our brains, it is not far fetched to suggest that we are damaging our wellbeing through our exposure to the Internet, potentially hardwiring in anxiety, addiction, apathy, etc.. This is different from saying that technology increases our anxiety (etc.). This is saying that technology is encoding anxiety (etc.) into our brains.

So let’s get to the wellbeing implications of the Internet.

We are increasingly addicted to information. E.g., “The near-continuous stream of new information pumped out by the Web also plays to our natural tendency to ‘vastly overvalue what happens to us right now,’ as Union College psychologist Christopher Chabris explains. We crave the new even when we know that ‘the new is more often trivial than essential’” (134). This is similar to Postman’s argument about the information-action ratio, that we feel increasingly disempowered to do anything with or about the information we receive. We are, like all good addicts, consuming compulsively; and we need more and more information to satisfy our cravings, ultimately meaning that we consume, but we are doing so only to feel ‘normal’. In other words, it is not making us happy; it is not satisfying our human needs.

Secondly, we are overloaded with information, which as we know from studies affects our ability to be compassionate, or to respond to information in emotionally appropriate ways. Carr writes, “Information overload has become a permanent affliction, and our attempts to cure it just make it worse. The only way to cope is to increase our scanning and our skimming, to rely even more heavily on the wonderfully responsive machines that are the source of the problem. Today, more information is ‘available to us than ever before,’ writes Levy, ‘but there is less time to make use of it – and specifically to make use of it with any depth of reflection.’ Tomorrow, the situation will be worse still” (170).

Thirdly, technology is making it more and more difficult to be contemplative. And it is very likely that humans need these opportunities to feel fulfilled: “When carried to the realm of the intellect, the industrial ideal of efficiency poses, as Hawthorne understood, a potentially mortal threat to the pastoral ideal of meditative thought. That doesn’t mean that promoting the rapid discovery and retrieval of information is bad. It’s not. The development of a well-rounded mind requires both an ability to find and quickly parse a wide range of information and a capacity for open-ended reflection. There needs to be time for efficient data collection and time for inefficient contemplation, time to operate the machine and time to sit idly in the garden. We need to work in Google’s ‘world of numbers,’ but we also need to be able to retreat to Sleepy Hollow. The problem today is that we’re losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we’re in perpetual motion” (168).

This really does sound like I’m just a Luddite. But I don’t think it’s crazy to weigh the downsides of technology versus their supposed benefits. Otherwise, how can we give our informed consent to the objects in our world? And without this consent, of course these technologies will appear to us as techno-demons, i.e. as forces that confront us that are beyond our control. But they are in our control! And the key is to begin by being questioning. This is no easy task, especially since it is very difficult to appreciate the effects technology are having on us while we are being affected by them (it’s easier for an outsider to study this). And there is an element of denial as well, given the Sisyphean challenge of trying to stop the continued proliferation of technologies and the growing power they have over us (for example, we can’t stop the Google Book Search, no matter how damaging this may be). But I think if we face up to the difficult truths, we can start to improve our situation, and we’ll be better off.

Jane McGonigal – Gaming Can Make A Better World

In his book, Carr writes, “The importance of such skills [the ones fostered by computer game play] shouldn’t be taken lightly. As our work and social lives come to center on the use of electronic media, the faster we’re able to navigate those media and the more adroitly we’re able to shift our attention among online tasks, the more valuable we’re likely to become as employees and even as friends and colleagues” (140). Jane McGonigal takes this argument one step further, arguing that the skills developed in online game play are the skills that can help us save the world. Or more correctly, she believe that games reinforce behavior and attitudes that may prove necessary for solving our real world problems.

The first such attitude is what she describes as “urgent optimism.” Unfortunately, she admits, so far this urgent optimism translates into the belief that one can change the virtual world only, and not the real world (the very thing she hopes to change with her games). But the point is that, whereas in the real world we feel increasingly disempowered to make real change, paralyzed by the seeming impossibility of affecting big problems, in the game world, these players feel like nothing is impossible. I would agree that we certainly need more of this.

The second behavior is that gamers are really good at weaving a social fabric. I might suggest that the weaving of this fabric is a game in itself – strategic alliances. My real concern here is that it reinforces the slightly sick transformation of ‘friendship’ that is occurring with our social media. And the other is that this notion of geographically boundless collaboration itself has environmental implications, when we consider the resources that go in to maintaining these connections (see Mobile Lives). But I am torn here, because in my work, I’m arguing that we need greater social connections, and these gamers are doing this. I suppose the difference is that I’m suggesting that the connections are themselves better (i.e. they are more fulfilling, and meaningful), whereas she is implying that these connections need to be more numerous, and more organized, which itself betrays a worldview bias.

The third attitude is what she calls “blissful productivity.” This is the idea that humans are most human when they are being productive, and that we feel good about this. I find this funny, in that it seems like the latest transformation of the Protestant Ethic to fit our modern world. But yes, it would be nice if these productive efforts were focused on changing the world for the better, rather than on making money (and in turn, working to perpetuate the world as it is now).

And finally, she identifies “epic meaning” as being something that gamers are drawn to. When describing the appeal of her game, A World Without Oil, she says blithely that “nobody wants to change how they live because it’s good for the world, or because they’re supposed to,” but that if you immerse people in an epic game, they can in a sense be tricked into doing what’s good for the world (though she didn’t phrase it that way). I find this really sad on the one hand, because I can’t fathom why our sustainability problems are not ‘epic’ enough to engender this motivation. On the other hand, my research argues something not too dissimilar! – namely that I suggest that people need to be re-immersed (reminded in some cases) in a meaningfilled world, one that is passed down through great myths and spiritual traditions, in order that they adopt these more harmonious behaviors. (See Walker’s Sustainable By Design.) As she said, those who participated in the epic game, continued the practices learned years after the game ended. This suggests that this is likely the key, and that I am on the right track. You have to provide people with a greater reason to want to change the world. I just sort of wish it wasn’t by having them play games online.

McGonigal has to overcome many people’s kneejerk reaction to immersion. People might argue that immersion is bad – or if not inherently bad, that this amount of time immersed in a fictional world is to the detriment of real world health/happiness/productivity, etc.. I don’t think immersion is bad (see Ryan post). And I don’t think that the amount of time spent means that it is necessarily bad either. It all depends on what you are gaining from that engagement. My issue is that the games are built within the same paradigm that seems to be producing an unsustainable relationship between humans and the planet. They reinforce particular kinds of thinking (as I mentioned before about collaboration/information exchange, for example), and they increase our addiction to computer technologies, which has both psychological and environmental implications. For example, she quickly mentions how many more gamers will be using mobile devices to connect to these games, and dismisses the environmental impact by saying that the power they use will be increasingly ‘green’. I worry that there will be a point at which these lines cross on the graph, and that as we use more and more devices/energy, we are running out of time to use these games to solve these huge problems – or indeed to do anything to solve them. Increased gaming accelerates the crises in some ways, just in terms of the energy cost of doing so.

And as for the ‘escapism’ arguments against immersion, she is not advocating exodus into virtual reality. She doesn’t want to make better games so that we have a better place to escape to. She wants to make better games that help us make our real world better. I think this is a great mission.

Finally, I must come back to the question she asks, which is: In all of the zillions of hours we spend gaming, what exactly are we training for? She quotes a figure that the average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming, which, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s research, means that we are producing a fleet of gaming ‘virtuosos’. But really, are these individuals ‘virtuosos’ or ‘idiot savants’? I guess I think that being a great computer gamer may not be that helpful when the time comes that we disengage from computer technology. If we are creating a generation of people who are excellent at solving problems specifically with computer – or a she suggests, we are evolving to think like this – then we may be in big trouble because. What happens when we try to unplug? Do we know how to function without these tools? We are not preparing ourselves for Power Down. And as Carr shows, using computers to help us solve problems does not make us better problem solvers, but worse….

Carr's The Shallows - the Internet is changing us

A summary of:

Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

(Be Warned: The Internet is changing us)

The main message Carr sends in this new book is that our technology – indeed, every new medium – changes us. This is not a new idea. McLuhan, whom he cites frequently, is famous for saying that the “medium is the message”, alluding to the “transformative power of new communication technologies” (2). But this aphorism was also, according to Carr, a warning “about the threat the power poses – and the risk of being oblivious to the threat” (2). Carr suggests that often times, the introduction of a new technology sparks debate about the wrong thing, namely the content the technology conveys. Carr writes: “What both enthusiast and skeptic miss is what McLuhan saw: that in the long run a medium’s content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it – and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society” (3). Just as “When a carpenter picks up a hammer, the hammer becomes, so far as his brain is concerned, part of his hand” (208), when we use the Internet, the Internet becomes an extension of our brains.

So how does the Internet change us? Well, some cognitive skills are strengthened as we engage with the Web. These include things like “hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues” (139). As a 2003 Nature study shows, game players are more deft as shifting their visual focus and identify more items in their visual fields. The authors of this study concluded that “‘although video-game playing may seem to be rather mindless, it is capable of radically altering visual attentional processing’” (139). A similar argument has been made by Jane McGonigal (see post). But the question is, how useful are these skills in a age when computers no longer exist? If we are training ourselves to be better and better at using computers – i.e. thinking like computers – aren’t we getting less and less good at NOT using computers? (Of course, not only are their cognitive tradeoffs to be considered with our increased Web use, there are negative psychological consequences to this as well – which is the topic of my next blog.)

Another thing that becomes clear in reading this book is that the tenets that underpin technology are self-reinforcing. For example, Carr identifies the Internet as one of many “intellectual technologies,” in that they seek to “extend or support our mental powers” (44). In using the Internet, we tacitly accept the correctness of this endeavor; and the more we use the Internet, the more we come to value its cause. Nowhere is this more evident than in Google itself. Carr quotes Richard Koman, who said that Google “‘has become a true believer in its own goodness, a belief which justifies its own set of rules regarding corporate ethics, anti-competition, customer service and its place in society’” (164). Here we see in action the reshuffling of the hierarchy of value system. Whereas once honesty and community etc. may have been at the top, here they are subordinated to freedom of information. (For evidence of this, note the many lawsuits against Google’s Book Search and their dismissive, cavalier attitude, Google’s Eric Schmidt saying: “‘Imagine the cultural impact of putting tens of millions of previously inaccessible volumes into one vast index, every word of which is searchable by anyone, rich or poor, urban or rural, First World or Third, en toute langue – and all, of course, entirely for free’” (162).) The Google Book Project vaults “data” and “information” to the top of our priorities, asserting yet again “the machine” over “the garden” (167). It is little surprise, then, that Westerners see their great philanthropic mission as being the increased access to information for supposedly ‘disadvantaged’ populations (e.g. the well-meaning but entirely misguided One Laptop Per Child Initiative; proving that poverty is measured in diminished informational resources, rather than diminished social bonds, happiness, etc.).

What is even more worrying – and frankly insulting – is the assertion by these intellectual technologies (the Web more so than others, I would argue) that we would be “‘better off’ if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by artificial intelligence” (173). When societies were becoming literate, there was similar debate about the impact it would have on people’s minds. Socrates feared that writing would teach people to become less dependent on their own memory, and remember things “not from within themselves, but by means of external marks” (177). And he was right. But this is ever more true with the Internet, which encourages people to completely offload their memory to the Web, to save up precious brain space. But Socrates’ wariness should prove to us just how far our line in the sand has moved, how much we have been changed by our technology. If books were at one time anathema to us, and now many of us see nothing wrong with deferring by default to Google’s search results, it should suggest to us that perhaps we need to rethink the seemingly unquestionable sense of the mission of intellectual technologies.

Another way that technology changes us is that it homogenizes us culturally, so that we lose all rich, human ways of doing as we replace them with specifically technological ways of doing. (This is another reason for my aversion to One Laptop Per Child – pushing Western values to non-Western countries.) Carr writes, “Culture is more than the aggregate of what Google describes as ‘the world’s information.’ It’s more than what can be reduced to binary code and uploaded onto the Net. To remain vital, culture must be renewed in the minds of the members of every generation. Outsource memory, and culture withers” (197). He quotes Richard Foreman, who argues that offloading memory threatens both the depth of culture and the depth of self: “‘I come from a tradition of Western culture,’ he wrote, ‘in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality – a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West.’ But now, he continued, ‘I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’ As we are drained of our ‘inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,’ Foreman concluded, we risk turning into ‘pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button’” (196).

The final way that technology changes us is that we design our societies to function around its capabilities; or as Weizenbaum says, “Such technologies become part of ‘the very stuff out of which man builds his world” (206). Carr quotes Weizenbaum futher: “‘The computer was not a prerequisite to the survival of modern society in the post-war period and beyond,’ Weizenbaum argued; ‘its enthusiastic, uncritical embrace by the most “progressive” elements of American government, business, and industry made it a resource essential to society’s survival in the form that the computer itself had been instrumental in shaping’” (207). Carr explains further: “Comptuers would come to mediate the activities that define people’s everyday lies – how they learn, how they think, how they socialize. What the history of intellectual technologies shows us, he warned, is that ‘the introduction of computers into some complex human activities may constitute an irreversible commitment.’ Our intellectual and social lives may, like our industrial routines, come to reflect the form that the computer imposes on them” (207). Just as Carr warned from the beginning: “The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master” (4). This is because, “Once (206) adopted , they can never be abandoned, at least not without plunging society into ‘great confusion and possibly utter chaos.’ An intellectual technology, he wrote, ‘becomes an indispensible component of any structure once it is to thoroughly integrated with the structure, so enmeshed in various vital substructures, that it can no longer be factored out without fatally impairing the whole structure’” (207).

My concern is this: Everything we know as humans (from our spiritual traditions, social taboos, etc.) should tell us that we should resist the mesmerizing effect of these intellectual technologies, and yet we sacrifice these values because adopting them is easier to do. But like every empire, the Age of the Computer will one day fall (just as cars will as fossil fuels dry up and nuclear power cannot supply enough energy to the grid to provide for an electric car society), and when that comes, I’m afraid we’ll be very ashamed of having eschewed our human values for technological ones.

I want to end on a more positive note. The real question about the power of technology should be this: How do we use it to our advantage? Can we see hope in the transformative affects of media? Firstly, as Langdon Winner pointed out, “technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning” (47). To us, this should indicate that if we design responsibly, we can have a huge impact on our very worldview. So just as the mechanical clock “helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man” (44), it is possible that a spiritualized cyberspace might create an altogether different man, perhaps an incarnation that’s more sensitive to issues of human/nature harmony. And secondly, if we recognize that the addition of a medium affects all other media – in McLuhan’s words, ‘It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them’ (89) – then if we create a new Internet, it has the power to affect the Internet we have now. In other words, we are not in competition with previous, highly popular incarnations of the Web. By innovating cyberspace creatively, we may ameliorate the negative impacts of the Web (as we know it today) by merely opening eyes to an alternative.

Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy

A summary of:

Wijers, L. (1996). Art Meets Science and Spirituality In A Changing Economy: From Competition to Compassion. Wiley-Academy: London.

In 1990, leaders in art, science, spirituality and economics met to discuss how in the world these various disciplines might come together to make a) a more unified sense, and b) a positive change for our culture. Physicist David Bohm summed up the conference’s mission: “I think, as is implicit in this conference, that there are three basic components of culture, which are art, science and spirituality. These are the centre of culture and culture, which I say, is shared meaning. Now, if we separate art, science and spirituality, as they are today, we have a tremendous incoherenece in our culture. Of course, as I said, the purpose of this conference is to start something that might make our culture more coherent” (25). This is not unlike the mission of HighWire, and my project in particular. I suppose like them I see the separating of these disciplines, and the separating out of spirituality, as a major source of confusion for us. How can we understand the bigger pictures in the world? Mother Tessa Bielecki says, “What interests me most is the spiritual welfare of the world; that is spirituality as the foundation for every other way in which we might talk about the welfare of the planet. Part of our problem is that we are compartmentalised and we relegate spirituality to a department that can easily be dismissed as irrelevant. We need to re-awaken to the fact that we are fundamentally spiritual beings and that art flows out of our spirituality, science flows out of our spirituality, economies flow out of our spirituality. Everything has its foundation in spirituality” (120). And F. W. Christians argues that it is the imbalance between these elements of culture that is dangerous: “It is a fact that there is already a huge discrepancy between what science and technology are offering and what the human soul or spirituality is digesting. This imbalanced situation might produce an increasing potential for conflict. Therefore we have to find the appropriate balance to make beneficial use of the products of technology and science. Regarding what you just explained to us about spirituality; in my opinion we have to cultivate those sensitivities and foster spirituality” (104).

The other problem with relegating the spiritual to the fringes is that we have to wonder what we are rooted to. If we were rooted to values like those of all spiritual traditions – compassion, being one of them – then our society would be more compassionate, and we’d all be better off: “If we were truly compassionate individuals, we would have a compassionate society and vice versa. Compassion, in the dictionary definition, is ‘a fellow feeling’. The real meaning of the word compassion is ‘to feel together’. If people have the same feeling together, and are responsible for one another, then there is compassion” (David Bohm, 58). So this would suggest the value of working on technology that can foster compassion in individuals – because it will in turn lead to a compassionate society, which is to say a change in our selfish worldview. The point I’m trying to make is that the key to helping to shift a worldview is to begin with individuals; perhaps by changing the nature of the technology they engage with on a daily basis that encourages the formation of this worldview.

So what is compassion? We have a definition from David Bohm already. The Dalai Lama has much to say on this as well: “Community, friendships, harmony, these are the basic factors. That you have compassion, affection, respect for the other’s view, a concern about the other’s right. That is the basis of harmony and friendship. And in family and married life, one should also not only think of oneself, but also be concerned about the partner’s rights, feelings, and opinions – again, mutual respect. That is also the basis of a longlasting marriage. All these things have very much to do with human compassion, human affection and gentleness. Therefore these are the basics of moral ethics” (45). For the Dalai Lama, compassion requires us to be responsible for each other: “I always feel that compassion is not just a mere warm heart, but in genuine compassion there is some sense of responsibility. With that kind of compassion you try to lead and serve, as much as you can” (58). A major question discussed at the conference was what this means for a capitalistic society, which is competitive by nature. The Dalai Lama says, “there may be some kind of competition, but that, I don’t think, causes opposition” (58). He suggests that it is possible to have an Economy of Compassion, a subject taken up in earnest by economist Stanislav Menshikov, who believes that the key to achieving this is that, “People have to understand each other’s motives” (49). This would suggest that people have to foster their empathy skills. And I do wonder how easy this is done with our current technology, which separates us and shields socially relevant information that we might use to understand each others’ subtler signals.

The general consensus at the conference is summed up by scientist Francisco Varela: “‘Our world needs a different understanding if we are to survive’, Francisco Varela says. ‘Instead of self-interest, other-interest would change our world.’ In his view a basic principle in evolution is cooperation and the acceptance of the groundlessness of our existence” (114). He bases his thinking on Mayahana tradition, which is centrally concerned with groundlessness/emptiness and compassion (115): “Thus sunyata, the loss of a fixed reference point, is said to be inseparable from compassion like the two wings of a bird. Our natural impulse is one of compassion, but it has been obscured by habits of ego-clinging like the sun is obscured by a passing cloud” (115). It does seem that technology is at least partially responsible for eroding just these compassionate impulses. The question is, how can we foster “an attitude of non-egocentric concern”?: “It obviously cannot be created merely through norms and rationalist injunctions. It must be developed through letting go of ego-centered habits. Individuals must personally discover and admit their own sense of ego in order to go beyond it” (115). This is the value of interacting with a technology that purposely designs for selflessness: through engagement, it reinforces different – more positive – behavior and modes of thinking.

(As a side-note: this groundlessness is an interesting way of justifying the spiritual potential of cyberspace. Varela says, “When the two planetary forces, science and Buddhism, come genuinely together, we might no longer need and desire foundations and so can take up the further tasks of building and dwelling in worlds without ground” (116).)

One of the issues discussed at the conference was how to define spirituality. Economist JM Pinheiro Neto says: “by spirituality I would mean, all the various forms of belief in something bigger than we are” (135). Spiritual leader Raimon Panikkar says, “…without some spirituality, which makes me aware of my infinite dignity, and of my intrinsic value, and of the importance of love, real joy and happiness, without all that I am but a machine. As the Taoists said, if you are good at handling a machine, it is because your heart has already become a machine” (197). Panikkar also suggests that spirituality is in direct tension with contemporary Western society: “‘The Contemplative Mood radically challenges some of the basic assumptions of modern Western society. Its stress on spontaneity, desirelessness, delight in the momentary, indifference to wealth, prestige, success, sets it at odds with the modern labour pathos. To be a contemplative in this day and age is to be à rebours, against the grain.’” (194). Artist Marina Abramovic echoes this sentiment: “Now to come back to ‘less is more’. What we need is to empty our house. We are polluted with information, with everything we get in all the time. Our concentration span is not more than five minutes on any subject. So I can imagine how difficult it is for us to be here. What we could do is simply to clean the body, so that it can finally receive something else” (208). And she also says later, “The sad story here is that we cover our houses with carpets and we cover our streets with concrete. We use telephones instead of telepathy. With all the progress, we exchange computers for our sensitivity. We don’t use our intuition or our creativity at all. Even if we have free time we switch on our television and will just be hypnotised by the programmes. …There is this incredible problem that we are completely disconnected from the flow of nature” (209).

Brian Redhead, the conference moderator, asks some interesting questions about spirituality: “is spirituality nostalgia for the past? Is it escapism for another world? (103) Will it be the reward when we get everything right? Or is it something far more important than all of those?” (104) Religious Studies expert Houton Smith provides an excellent response worth pasting here whole:

“Spirituality is one of these primitive concepts, perhaps like ‘matter’ or ‘mind’ that is not easy to define, but I’ll make an attempt. I think that human beings are in nature – the technical word is homo religiosos – religious animals. Anthropologists have found no society that doesn’t have religion. Beyond our finite selves, I think every man and woman senses what the mystics call ‘the ground of our being’, something that is greater within us than our finite selves. When this ultimate component in our being breeds through our intellect, it is genius. When it breeds through our will, it is virtue. And when it flows through our hearts, it is love. It is real. It is not nostalgia. If we have lost the power to sense it, that is a brutality that somehow modernity has inflicted on us. / …a fundamental feature of the wisdom traditions that one finds right across the board is that, in Christian terminology, he who seeketh his or her light in egotistic grasping loses it, and those who can step out of their won light and cease to identify themselves simply with their private interests, find light. One of the most beautiful, succinct descriptions comes from the mystic Angelos Celisios: ‘Oh God, whose boundless love and joy are present everywhere, he cannot come to visit you unless you are not there.’ That is what spirituality is – a tropism within us towards the one, the unity, the coherence that life seeks, the more which is greater in value and worth than we have ever yet experienced, and finally, the mystery. So yes, if we learn the lesson, the reward will be there.” (104).

Another way the panelists understand spiritiuality is in terms of human wellbeing. Physicist Fritjof Capra says, “Human wellbeing is a very vital term here. The purpose of development is to increase human wellbeing” (217). He also conceded that human wellbeing is defined differently in different places – perhaps it has to do with what Hick was talking about in terms of the levels of meaning that are appropriate to one’s situation – but it does seem that ‘happiness’, although a bit wooly, is getting close to the definition. On the Moral Maze program (19/1/11), Professor Layard defined happiness this way: “Happiness is feeling good and wanting to go on feeling that way; the opposite, unhappiness, would be feeling bad and not wanting to go on feeling that way.” Notice the similarities in what the Dalai Lama suggests we aim for (i.e. happiness, even though he doesn’t use that word here): “Those materials which bring us suffering, and which we consider poisonous, we try to get rid of. Similarly, the different thoughts or the different minds are equally important for our joys and pains. Therefore it is worthwhile studying closely and analyzing the different kinds of mental states. We should then make an effort to increase the mental states which help us and do us good; and we should minimize the mental states that bring us fear or suffering” (23). At the same time, he states, “This is not a religious concern; it is our daily life’s requirement” (23). Later, he suggests that this is the key concern of secular ethics: “Moral ethics means: refrain from all activities which are harmful to humanity or the environment. This, I feel, is the explanation of secular moral ethics” (45). But the Dalai Lama complicates this picture by offering different kinds of morality: “I think, first, we have to make clear: what is the meaning of morality? I think there are two types of morality. There is one type which is related with religion; which is something different. Then I think there should be another kind of morality, which I usually call ‘spiritual development’. And also, whether one is a believer or non-believer, a very important thing in the day-to-day life of the community and the family, which I call ‘the basic human quality’ – that is, human affection. Regarding morality in that sense, I think the best teacher is our mother. Every human being knows motherly affection; a mother’s milk is a symbol of compassion. Affection is the fundamental point for the survival of humanity” (66).

Redhead also asks the panel why the conference participants are using the term ‘spiritual’ and not ‘religious’. Smith’s response is a familiar one for many: “Oh good, this takes me back home, to California, where spirituality is a good word and religion is a bad word. Religion is spirituality institutionalised; and every institution is a flawed reality” (104). Consider this study reported recently by the BBC (see chart towards the bottom).

It is easy to stop there, to just be freaked out by the word religion. But Smith makes the very important point that religion “is the only way spirit can get traction into history. Otherwise lovely ideas die with the people who have them.” (104). The message for this project, then, is that we ought to keep the gifts that religion have given us and continue to be inspired by what’s good about them.

Finally, I shall end this long post with some of the more inspiring points from the panelists. Fritjof Capra says, “What you are changing is people’s perception. That is where you can help. Because this crisis is a crisis of perception. We need to perceive the world differently to act differently. That is where art can be of tremendous help” (211). This is about designing real alternatives that embody different worldviews. My mission doesn’t need to be helping people practice meditation, for example (though many participants thought this was the job of the education system); but rather it is to cause a shift in attitude. As spiritual leader Sogyal Rinpoche explains, “Often people think that meditation is technique, but it’s not, it is attitude” (169).

This book also suggests that art is perhaps the most powerful way of facilitating fundamental change. But art and artist should be defined loosely, and could and should include technology developers. As Wijers writes in the book’s introduction, “[Henning Christiansen’s] sentence was: Everyone is an Artist. One can understand this only if one replaces artist with creator” (12). Marina Abramovic defines the good artist, the ideal to strive for: “It is important that we have this openness and see art as a possibility of transforming. Who are the good artists? In every century you have one or two, you are lucky if you have three good artists. The ones who can through their work change the way society thinks and have in their work a prediction of the new developments of humankind, these are the good artists and they inspire you and everyone to be good artists as well” (208). In other words, applied to my research, my goal should be to inspire others to be good creators of technology.

And this is my favorite quote from the whole book, again by Abramovic: “We need people to put their money in dreams, in concepts which have a prediction that may change society” (211).

Do Nothing

Check this out:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/01/24/do.nothing/

Interesting idea! I get the spiritual intentions of this. But my objections to this are the same as my objections to any attempt to design spiritual/religious practice into technology. Is this our place? More importantly, why can't people do this without technology??? It's a sad state of affairs if the only way we can meditate is through our computers.

How is this any different from the truly non-spiritual Wii Fit meditation module, where users stare at a flame and sit perfectly still? Who are we kidding? This is not the path to a fundamental shift in our orientation to technologies. It is simply using existing (highly flawed) technologies for spiritual purposes. This goes back to the Bell post, very early on. We can always appropriate our technologies for spiritual/religious purposes. But I propose we try to do more.

Wrapped Attention

A summary of:

Walker, S. (2011) The Spirit of Design: Objects, Environment and Meaning, Earthscan/James & James Scientific Publishers, London.

Chapter 10 – Wrapped Attention: designing products for evolving permanence and enduring meaning

Stuart Walker provides a different 4^th bottom line to consider in the sustainable design debate: “personal meaning”. It is important to note, firstly, that it seems specifically to exclude culturally shared meanings. This seems intentional, to supplement the current triple bottom line: “What is missing from the triple bottom line is explicit recognition that human beings are not only gregarious creatures, but also individuals. Further still, we are individuals who are meaning-seekers” (10.3). In other words, this 4^th element absorbs a bit of the ‘spirituality’ that Inayatullah and others have proposed, in that it “[acknowledges] that sustainability has to be relevant and meaningful to the individual person, as well as socially responsible” (10.3).

But at the same time, Walker’s assessment is a cultural one, and this fourth element addresses (perhaps secondarily) a shared worldview that he sees as being increasingly devoid of genuine meaning, and worse, erodes our commitment to shared social obligations: “The relevance of this fourth element becomes evident in light of research that suggests multitasking and partial attention, as are common in the use of electronic devices, can have detrimental effects on behaviours and values related to social responsibility, environmental stewardship and substantive notions of meaning” (10.2). Walker’s goal as a designer and academic is to show that “more localized, more flexible, more enduring, and less socially and environmentally damaging” designs are possible, which are also “in closer accord with ideas of personal meaning” (10.2).

In this chapter, Walker identifies some worrying behaviors made possible by – and de-elevation of traditional values brought about by – current technological designs. In particular he highlights information overload and dissolving social bonds:

1) “information overload and multitasking can adversely affect our ability to be empathetic, ethically responsive, compassionate, and tolerant and to develop emotional stability—all traits that, traditionally, have been associated with the term ‘wisdom’. Our capacity for empathy, to be inspired, or to be ethically concerned has been linked to the slower acting parts of the brain that require time to reflect on the information received, and it is these parts that appear to be circumvented when we engage in multiple activities simultaneously. Prolonged periods of multitasking via technological products have also been linked to an increase in anxiety and depression and a reduction in attention, intellectual ability, and workplace productivity” (10.5).

2) “Despite offering ‘connection’, they have the effect of separating us from a direct interaction with, and awareness of, our world, which serves to add to our ‘blindness’. This separating effect also applies to our interactions with other people. Caller identification allows us to choose with whom we talk, and e-mail enables us to control when and with whom we communicate; this control increases the distance between ourselves and the other—whether a friend or a stranger” (10.5).

Walker criticizes the irresponsibility of designers, and he questions whether making ‘stuff’ is itself a meaningful activity for designers to pursue. He argues that “if industrial design is to address these considerable challenges [e.g. sustainability], it needs to be reinvigorated through a new sense of purpose” (10.6). This is my criticism exactly of technological developers: the mission seems devoid of purpose if it is just to create cool stuff to distract us from reality.

This means, though, that we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions. We have to challenge ourselves to step outside our familiar ways of thinking and doing; or in Walker’s words, ‘challenge our embedded notions’. In this chapter, Walker shows how this can be done in relation to the mobile phone. We are all too familiar with the mobile phone being a certain thing: a pocket-sized, plastic coated device that we will dispose of in a few years when it becomes outmoded. But we are tacitly accepting a number of shortcomings: “We cannot select a phone that is capable of being incrementally modified in terms of its parts as our needs change, or that we can update aesthetically from locally made, culturally relevant components. And we cannot choose among phones that are conceptually diverse in terms of how their functional benefits are manifested” (10.10). Phones, we accept, are not sustainable. But hey – we want them. In order to become sustainable, the mobile phone as we know it would have to undergo considerable changes. It would have to:

1) evolve continuously

2) be maintained, repaired, and upgraded locally

3) foster more considered, less distracting use patterns

4) internalise impacts

Walker understands the naïveté of proposing we simply must all exchange our mobile phones for these completely reconceptualized phones. But the point he is making is that one of the fundamental flaws is that designers do not provide consumers with Choice. There are some for whom an assemble-it-yourself-as-needed Pouch Phone is appealing because it allows them to foster mindful practice. (This model was

probably inspired by Borgmann’s notion of focal practices – the idea being to make using the phone “a focused activity” (10.14)). But the key to providing Choice is that this choice is Real, which is to say viable. As Walker shows in this chapter, it is possible: “The concepts presented here suggest a different relationship with technological goods by proposing a direction that is not only more compatible with the principles of sustainability but also facilitates a more considered use - one that is in accord with notions of inner meaning” (10.17).

Just for fun, here are some interesting alternative mobile phone designs. These are aimed at increasing privacy, but some, like the Pentaphone, must accidentally produce focused attention when using.