*Disclaimer* this is all mostly my own opinion of a documentary called "Digital Nation" directed by Rachel Dretzin created for the PBS series Frontline and other random thoughts.
I watched the documentary "Digital Nation" today which is a, you guessed it (not sure why Im referencing 'you' as in people read this, since they don't) a documentary. In the film it's discussed what the effect of digital media is on our lives and more importantly the minds of the youth of today. Several valid points were brought up in the film which I have noticed about my own habits but was not aware that so many others have picked up similar to my own. Such as the fact that we now write in paragraphs, you might say "oh but we were taught to write in paragraphs thats how you write an essay or any other formal form of communication". No what I mean is that we will in most cases (not statistically proven) write one paragraph, stray away from the project, essay, whatever and do something else i.e. check email, text, play a song, watch a video etc.Then return and write another paragraph which in turn leaves the two as un-adjoined ideas, the content of which can greatly differ from one another leaving the reader unsure of what exactly your point was to begin with. While they may have one unifying concept, while you were "multitasking" you may not feel the same way about your topic when you return to it, causing you to write differently. I didn't take this concept seriously until I sat and thought about just how much I really do these things, at any given moment my attention is drawn in several directions where as in the past this wasn't so. For instance in writing this one paragraph I; visited the Netflix website to check my recently viewed films to get the director and publishing company that created the documentary I wanted to write about, visited a thesaurus website to find a better word for writing and then decided it doesn't matter no one reads this and besides I am not that intelligent, checked my text messages, and have the new All that remains album playing in the background.
On a day to day basis we are all continually getting more and more trapped into digital "worlds" more so than the real world, why? Because the real world is depressing and doesn't afford us the ability in most cases to do the things that we wish we could. Now I am not a player but I do wonder that if the game World of Warcraft were available for people of say med-evil times and they were told that they could be a king or any of the other mythic creatures in the game that they could never be in real life because they are a peasant, who wouldn't play? Now not only do we have the ability to play these games that make fantasy a reality but we also have the ability to as I said in a previous post communicate with anyone anywhere at any time. This is becoming something that the world has never seen, and more and more we would rather live in fantasy than reality. But that is not the only path to be taken, nonetheless you can be sucked into digital life and completely ignore the rest of the world. Take for example a family of 4 in todays world, the father might be on his laptop reading the news on cnn while the daughter is on her laptop watching youtube videos and the son is playing a game on his DS and the mother is looking up something housewifish (it doesn't matter what I write for her it will seem sexist) on another laptop. Each of these people are all in the same room yet none of them is paying any attention to the people in the room with them, they are in their own worlds. You see this out in the world too, people walking and talking on their cell phones, texting, or those writer wannabee's at starbucks who think everyone needs to see them on their laptop.
The worry is that this is effecting us in adverse ways, that we cannot form complete thoughts anymore because we are thinking in too many directions. A study was done independently of the documentary on the mental activity of the so-called multitaskers of today, and the results weren't what they were expecting. They found that the mental activity of someone who was reading a book was actually lower than that of someone who is Googling different ideas. They did not say what the person was searching or if they were being told what to search or not but the brain scan showed that the mental activity of the person searching the net was higher. However when these same people who professed to be able to handle 5 or more tasks at once (all internet and digital media related) failed significantly when put up against a test created to see how quickly and accurately the subject's brain is to change subject matter or principal with the click of 1 of 4 buttons to correspond with the image shown.
Now back to the idea that we are unable to form complete thoughts as a side effect of digital media (I just changed the artist and song I am listening to while transitioning to this next paragraph), the reason why they believe this is happening is because as we answer our texts, emails and change songs and search through the internet simultaneously we are disorganizing our memory. What that means essentially is that because we tend to do so many things at the same time or at least seemingly, our thoughts are formed in part and then dissipated by our changing of subject material or at least the thoughts are fragmented. This is said to effect the tweens and teens that are growing up in the proposed digital revolution the most. Because at their age the brain is not yet fully formed and habits are starting to take place so if they are teaching their brains to constantly change subject and format, there may be a deeper consequence not yet observed. In other words what will these kids do when put into a work place later in life that does not allow for their need to change subject matter, where they must stay focused on the task at hand and not derive from it. However there is also the possibility that when they enter the workforce that jobs may begin to evolve towards this type of behavior instead only the tasks being work related. In my last job multitasking was actually in the job requirements list because I did have to switch between several different banking programs, search the internet to validate information and possibly also call out to customers while only being paid for the job as whole.
Perhaps the jobs of the future will require multitasking more and more, I know that anything involving the tech industry and even banking already does and uses it to its advantage. So perhaps the new generation is not lost, perhaps it is those who do not possess this quality that will be left behind However this is still the thought that this is damaging to us, and I wonder how it has effected me since I am not truly a child of this generation they are speaking of. I grew up as the internet was being born and coming into existence, and through my adolescence I saw it take form and become the all-controling force that it is today. The generation being spoken of in the documentary was the kids who have grown up with the internet being there and don't know life without it or all the digital media it entails. When I was a teen I did have a cell phone, but at first it was merely one of those trac-fones with minutes added from a card and it was a nokia the size of a brick. But I had one and that progressed to a smaller phone with T-mobile which I quickly became addicted to despite the crappy service, and from there phone after phone until the release of the iPhone. Holy atheismo (haha Futurama reference) was that awesome! From that point I had an internet connected phone which was a new addiction of its own, the internet right there in the palm of my hand, however slow the connection was, was irrelevant at the time. The internet has found its way into basically every facet of out daily lives, its on our phones, our computers, at work, on our game systems and somewhat our cars. We depend on it like a life resource, hardly anyone I know actually no one I know doesn't carry a cell phone with them. We have the ability to find out whatever random thing we may think up during the day, just Google it. It causes us to be less investigative because all we need to do is a click away and we have 134,857,582 search results at our fingertips.
It is strange to think how great we all thought this would be to be in the information technology era but yet how debilitating it has become and will become in the future. Less and less kids are outdoors playing because they are inside on their computers or game systems or phones. And so too is the rest of society, also a tidbit to think about is that robots are becoming a reality, and not just the ones that build cars. Sophisticated real robots, that can at this point already learn and complete new tasks, carry out armed military missions, and even dance. In the coming years they will become more and more a part of our daily lives whether we like it or not. It just brings to mind movies like iRobot and Robocop for me, or even the matrix, we are headed there and no one seems to mind. Its a bit far off but if I live that long (only about another 30 years) I'll have to chuckle to myself as my robot overlord crushes my skull between its titanium claws and say "totally called it".
This isn't to say that I am afraid of technology or think that it is bad, I am just as addicted as the next geek and every new piece of tech that comes out I want to have it and integrate it into my life. I am merely commenting on the fact that technology as invented controls us, but we have always been this way since the invention of the wheel, its how we use it that matters. Whether or not we face a future of black scorched skies and a desolate wasteland controlled by merciless killer robots or a bright shiny one with the machines doing all the work and people just living their lives in utopia is all up to us. Cheers.
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