This assignment is delayed due the fact that I came down with the cold that is going around almost immediately after class on Wednesday. I am aware that the first three readings (“A Manifesto for Cyborgs”, “Johnny Mnemnonic”, and “The Theory of the Virtual Class”) are corrupted. I have now found alternative versions for the first two and posted the links on the syllabus. You do not have to worry about “The Theory of the Virtual Class” for Wednesday, 14 September.
This cold is holding me back more than usual, so I am going to try to keep things simple to prompt you for the second assignment. The topic really covers the second half of last week’s and the first half of this week’s readings. How do you think digital technology has transformed our society’s experience of reading and writing? What do you see its future trajectory? As literary responses to the developments of the information age, how do Borges and/or Gibson capture or anticipate some of the phenomena you observe? That should be enough to get the conversation going. Have at it!
An interesting idea comes from the idea of the Digital Native. It seems quite clear that someone born into the digital/virtual world will have a much different reading and writing style than someone born before such modern digital technology. It seems that many of the newer technologies that digital natives grow up with leave them with a low tolerance for reading books in their entirety. The internet seems to be a big contributor to this low tolerance as much reading on the internet is explained to be quick with lots of distractions. The distractions can be other online articles, advertisements or even a voice telling you that you have new mail.
From “The Theory of the Virtual Class”, the digital natives seem to be described as omniscient in that they know everything, or at least are able to learn about anything at anytime using a quick internet search. The big question seems to be whether or not this ease and convenience to access so much information quickly is making the newer generation dumb.
In addition to reading and writing, the internet also can change the social lives of people. The internet allows you to create a network of friends in cyber space. What is interesting is how the internet seems to be changing our idea of a friend. A long time ago a friend may have been better understood as someone who you were close to both physically and emotionally that you shared thoughts with on a one on one basis. With the internet, a friend seems to include people that an individual has not even met in person.
When people use social internet sites such as facebook, They might write about how their day went. Before this digital technology a person who wanted to share their day might meet a close friend and exchange one on one intimate conversation to explain their day. With social internet sites like facebook, an individual can write about their day and post it for a large number of friends to read. In this case, the writer with the internet does not seem as interested in one particular close friend responding to their description of how their day went rather they want to broadcast it and allow whoever is interested to respond to their post. The writer may find that the cyber responses to their post is sufficient and the need for a close physical friend to share this information with diminishes. Most of this writing that is posted on online social sites is probably quite short, concise and to the point. If an online post was excessively long then it may deter someone from reading it. The act of reading and writing on social internet sites like facebook probably only strengthens the digital native’s lower tolerance to read whole books in their entirety.
We are seeing how the internet and word processing has affected general cognition in terms or reading and writing. Although one may struggle to adapt to create and process information, the creative drive will always be present. The danger of course is the immediacy of digital text, which mitigates the affect one could have among the conclave or others who use digital media (blog) to expound personal opinions and ideas while negating the respect of others. The abundance of text and all information makes it more difficult to cipher that which is meaningful. It is a positive if you know what you are looking for. However, as all technology becomes exploited, a younger generation that sees technology for its connivance and not for enrichment will maintain a lifestyle that sees the usage of technology for base purposes. Furthermore as more information is able to be produced, our ability to intake information is becoming more overwhelming. We can see the necessity to maintain something like a Facebook page requiring a significant amount of information. Activities such as this are retarding the written word. With the abundance of new technology, greater attention need to utilize such technology mitigates meaningful content to be produced. The genesis of ‘LOL’ has propagated a generation that has become progressively detached from genuine human emotions, that they must use an acronym to express themselves, through an artificial medium. Instead of seeking out new contacts with other people, we retreat to the confines of a 2.5 inch screen, progressively dehumanizing us. This is a general problem with modern life. We have adapted from agrarian life to blogging from an iPad. Is technology impeding on our evolution or is this evolution in of itself. A fear is instead of technology adapting to our needs, we must adapt to technology. With singularity approaching, a change will come that will make the industrial revolution look like a 3rd grade science project. From a philosophical standpoint, as technology progresses, will we be able to comprehend aesthetics, which inherently makes us human. Referring back to the original topic, writing will become as dehumanizing as binary code. Our desires will become automatic that the need of expression through writing can become a moribund medium. Reading will become more simplified to express only what is necessary. As man is an imperfect being, the benefits or failures of technology for the progression of our civilization remains to be seen.