Posted on 05/30/2014 3:25:36 PM PDT by NYer
Plato worried that the new media called “writing” would ruin our memories – and he was right.
“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”
Martin Heidegger and other philosophers worried that the typewriter would make our thinking more mechanical. They were right, too.
Each new medium has diminished man a little – radio made us expect to be entertained all the time; television hurt our ability to concentrate – even as each has added scope, ease and distance to his ability to communicate with others.
The Church has promoted each new medium (from radio onward, anyway), and it should – focusing on the good a new media can do, despite the risks. (Tomorrow, I will post: “How New Media Are Enhancing Our Lives”.)
June 1 is World Communications Day, and Pope Francis properly promotes today’s even newer media in his World Communications Address … but first, he explains some of the drawbacks.
I’ve noticed some too.
Cameraphones ruin moments, forever. A recent study says so but we all already know it. In the middle of quality time with our family, we scramble for our phone such that we focus not on the beautiful, moving, enriching moments, but on the self-referential act of capturing them. Then we take a picture that never gets printed, and rarely gets seen, and are left with a compromised memory of a compromised event on top of it.
Facebook is training in narcissism. The exaggerated feelings of self-importance a narcissist feels make the world feel like a movie starring them. So does Facebook. It forces us to recast activities in our mind in marketing language that will make them seem fascinating to others. We don’t just go to the park with our kids looking to enjoy each others company, we go to the park with our kids looking for a sharable moment. We hate the way TMZ treats celebrities’ personal lives; we are the TMZ of our own life on Facebook.
TVs in restaurants tell us our lives are inadequately interesting. It used to be that you had to go to a sports bar if you wanted to watch TV in public. Now TVs seem to be everywhere. Their message is clear: You, and what you have to say, is not quite interesting enough to sustain the attention of the person you are with. They need distractions to bear being with you. And television, a world where everyone is an entertainer, is the distraction par excellence.
That pornography is now commonplace teaches us that others exist for our pleasure. Real people have personalities, needs and demands. They require affection and appreciation and gratitude. Moments in which they allow our desires and wishes to dominate their actions and thoughts only come when we are willing to do the same for them. But pornography creates a fantasy world in which all of that “realness” seems intolerably tedious and virtual sex slaves become our new ideal of pleasure. Or, in other words, it expands the television world where everyone is an entertainer into our most intimate lives.
Smart phones’ browsers replace wonder and memory with Google search skills. Instant gratification of our material desires leaves us unable to build long-term, long-lasting satisfaction over time. We grow impatient with every pleasure that isn’t in our reach. Instant intellectual gratification does the same thing to our minds. Before, if we wanted to know who directed Twelve Angry Men or whose picture is on the two dollar bill or how many feet are in a mile, we either had to use our memories, ask a friend, or make a conscious decision not to care. Now we can Google it from wherever we are and what Plato feared from writing is true to a horrifying degree: Our memories are truncated and our wonder is fading away.
Together, all of this gives smartphones a creepy outsized place in our lives. Friends have always been invaluable: They are there to assist us, divert us, coax us to generosity, and lend an extra brain where necessary. Friends are still invaluable, but phones have inserted themselves into large swaths of the territory loved ones once occupied.
Our phone is the first thing we interact with in the morning and the last thing we interact with at night. Our phone catches us up on the news over breakfast, and we need our phone to capture our moments during the day to fill the newsfeeds of our lives. Our phone has games to divert us, and is a portablewindow into the the world of entertainers that exists for our pleasure that we need to escape into.
We can relate to AT&T’s new commercials and almost miss how creepy they are: People talk about the phones in their history as if they were people.
So … what could possibly be good about all this? Tune in tomorrow …
“In my first job, each document typed included 5 onion skin papers, separated by carbon papers. If one mistake was made, the entire document was tossed and the process began anew. Hence, emphasis was placed on one’s ability to type without error. Of course, once someone announced that no mistakes could be made, a mistake took place and the document was tossed.”
I was one of two boys in my high school typing class. I knew I needed to know how to type. And I did a lot of typing in high school and college after that.
When I was in Basic Training in the Army, one Saturday we were in formation and the Lieutenant asked if any of us knew how to type. Normally you do not volunteer for anything, but I said I did know how to type. I was ordered to report to the orderly room, and for the next two weeks I replaced the company clerk, who was going on leave. The No Errors allowed applied to everything I typed for that two weeks. I soon learned to type error free. But, oh how it would have been so nice to have a word processor then!
And as for the Word Processor not knowing, that is okay, because I know. I regularly over-rule my built-in Word Processor corrections.
I was at Benning in 1983 and whoever had the assignment of getting the company newsletter out got to type it out on a mimeograph thingy. An error required putting some kind of liquid on the stencil, letting it dry, and then re-typing the word. Oh, what fun.
White-out
Or we could go to the library and look it up. That option seems to be deliberately side stepped. Probably because it is the exact same thing you do with Google except now it is a bit easier.
Countless pointless arguments can be settled with a few keystrokes leaving us with more time to enjoy being with other people.
When the light turned red on us yesterday at a corner, the three other people standing there all pulled out their smartphones.
I agree.
Ah yes, Army & typing. My section chief told the 1SGT that I could type and I became the shadow clerk for the 6 weeks before the annual general inspection retyping all of the battery commander’s policy letters, DFs, & etc. We had just gotten a new commander a couple of weeks before. The 1SGT did offer to have me given a clerk-typist’s MOS as my secondary (I was a 13E, field artillery fire direction center) so that if I decided to make a career of the Army I’d have a 2nd MOS to make it to retirement if my hearing got too bad to continue working with the guns. I declined saying that if I stayed in it would not be in artillery. 3 years later I reenlisted for military intelligence
Well, take cell phone for instance. they didn’t exist 15 years ago. Anyone who is paying attention can see that they are robbing people of their ability to interact with the people around them. They are isolating and somewhat dehumanizing. People used to sing, and in some places like England and South Korea they still do. But here in the USA very few people seem willing to expose themselves to embarrassment by singing.. The songs of todays pop culture are no singable, why? Because they are aimed at people who don’t sing. Every bit of progress is not necessarily a good thing. I asked my students to copy something off the board and one of them said they could not read some of the words because my handwriting was bad. So I said they could copy it from page 96 in their book. And then they said, “Why should we copy it if it’s in our book?” If you don’t understand the problem with that sort of attitude then you are part of the problem. Of course I wanted them to write it down so that they would actually become more familiar with it. But the mentality is that they can just look it up on their phones or “whatever”. We are creating lazy people with all our technological gagets.
My son was a gunny in the Marines. Even developed a faster way to put guns on target that has been written into the manuals.
But as for ‘military intelligence’...some would say that is an oxymoron :)
I completely agree with this. When my wife and I got married, we instructed the DJ that our preference was that the music volume should be lowered such that it fades into the background and doesn’t inhibit conversation among our guests.
Cities were so much cleaner before the development of the horseless carriage.
I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things now compared to the way they used to be. All this progress -- phooey! In my day, we didn't have these cash machines that would give you money when you needed it. There was only one bank in each state -- it was open only one hour a year. And you'd get in line, seventeen miles long, and the line became an angry mob of people -- fornicators and thieves, mutant children and circus freaks -- and you waited for years and by the time you got to the teller, you were senile and arthritic and you couldn't remember your own name. You were born, got in line, and ya died! And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Life was simpler then. There wasn't all this concern about hy-giene! It my days, we didn't have Kleenex. When you turned seventeen, you were given the family handkerchief. ... It hadn't been washed in generations and it stood on its own ... filled with diseases and swarmin' with flies. ... If you tried to blow your nose, you'd get an infection and your head would swell up and turn green and children would burst into tears at the sight o' ya! And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn't need moooovin' pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" ... That's right! You'd sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, "Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn't've stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open." But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin' chickens over it. ... And that's the way it was and we liked it!
Progress?! Flobble-de-flee! In my day, when we were angry and frustrated, we just said, "Flobble-de-flee!" 'cause we were idiots and we didn't know what else to say! Just a bunch o' illiterate Cro-Magnons, blowin' on crusty handkerchiefs, waitin' in lines for our head to burst into flame and that's the way it was and we liked it!
One of my biggest complaints for a long time. Various forms of media has caused us to become so completely dissociated as human beings, and addicted to "objects" that control us. Like a powerful tool, they should only be used for a specific purpose, and prudently.
Genuine, quality human interaction amongst friends and family has become such a rarity these days. Instead Facebook has taken over as the surrogate, because it's "more convenient." How very sad, and tragic. Humans were not meant to operate by "remote control" or electronically, but sadly, that is what has happened. The technology has been abused horribly.
BTW....nice to "see" everyone here again. One of the reasons why I curtail my "media"...too much of a good thing. Many of God's blessings to all on this Holy Pentecost Sunday.
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