The reason this topic revolved back to the forefront of my thought process is because in my Human Geography class, we watched a segment of a PBS documentary about multi-taskers, specifically college students who thought they had it down. The Reader's Digest version of the story is that no matter how good we think we are at performing multiple tasks at once, we can't do much more simultaneously than walk and chew gum without engaging in some mild application of neuroplasticity, the re-organization of the brain itself.
This got me to thinking about how in our information-hungry and globalized world, our lives are saturated with technology. That's obvious. But it's difficult -- actually, pretty much impossible -- to completely know to what kind of state this obsession will lead our society to.
During a discussion after the film, there was a high-frequency interruption heard between an incoming text message and the computer which showed the video. For some reason, this struck me as such: that is precisely how our brains work -- as a computer. We can't learn with so many incoming and outgoing feeds between our fingers, flashing before our eyes. It's like when the hour glass graphic appears in place of a mouse on a PC -- information overload. Too much going on at once. But that's exactly the mindset Generation 2000 has convinced itself it has adapted to.
It also makes me inquire about future generations, though. What about the kids born yesterday, today, tomorrow? What about my future children? What are they going to experience as adolescents that affects their sentient in untested and potentially egregious ways? Will they ever have the need to express themselves utilizing a voice box? Will I even know the sound of their voice? Will they be required to or be able to learn about the Roman Empire or will I have to board an Airbus A380 (or any creative futuristic transportation devise) to show them what remains of the Colosseum, if anything, in 2020? Will "txt" become a possible language of study? Will vowels consequently become obsolete?
Just so it's out there, I don't intend much point to this blog other than to raise awareness of the acute weirdness of the time/place/mindset we live in. Most of my close friends know I think cell phones (as a telephone held to the ear or used via Bluetooth) are this generation's legal/unstudied cigarette, and will most likely lead to some mutant form of brain or ear cancer as time progresses, repeating history as cigarettes were once considered safe and socially acceptable but now are known to cause chronic diseases. But I'm not talking about just that. I'm saying everything about technology -- while it indubitably has its substantial merits -- is, well, sketchy. Learning more in-depth about the ways in which the addiction to social technology can affect cognition just confirms my trepidation for totally immersing myself in the digital world. Not that I'm suggesting that modern homo sapiens should regress back to caveman status, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to pull back the reins on the sterioded-up Secretariat that is 21st-century technology.
