Surfing
the Internet has become an increasingly popular activity all over the
world. And as the Internet has become
increasingly portable – first through laptops and then through smartphones and
tablets, it means that one can engage in this activity almost anywhere one
goes. But according to a recent article
in the Washington Post by Michael Rosenwald on April 6, such accessibility has
come with a hidden unforeseen cost. As
our brains become reconfigured to quickly scan endless quantities of data, we
are losing our capacity to sustain our focus for reading books. It seems that we are constantly looking for
key words and key phrases and feeling a desire to skip around, just as we do
with short Internet passages.
This
by itself is cause for alarm. It means
we are losing our capacity to read complex sentences and follow complex
narratives and complex lines of thought.
Our minds are geared to lots of free-floating figures in the form of
data and are becoming incapable of grounding themselves in a coherent body of
images, thoughts, and ideas. We are
increasingly only capable of absorbing defined discrete stimuli that come from
our machines and our technological environments, and we are becoming incapable
of absorbing the organic flowing blendable continual stimuli that are the
result of more grounded natural environments.
Yet books are important repositories of the ideational content of human
civilization. Without our being connected
properly to books, we lose an important component of what has made us human,
since the printing press made books available to large numbers of people.
Michael
Rosenwald is optimist that humans can train themselves to be biliterate –
equally capable of absorbing computer data and the coherent content of
books. I am not so sure. When I was studying classical and flamenco
guitar, my teacher explained to me that each of these styles required very
distinct muscle development in the fingers of the right hand. To be good at classical meant developing
muscles that impeded agility in flamenco and vice versa. They were not compatible with one
another. In my opinion, the same is true
for Internet scanning and book reading.
They are incompatible styles for absorbing written material. And the more we become configured for
Internet scanning, the more we lose an important essential part of our human
capacities.
Actually
what we lose goes beyond our style of reading.
The reconfiguring of our brain for Internet scanning actually extends
its influence into other areas of life as well.
Internet scanning predisposes us to shallow-bonded connections of all
sorts with the world. We search out
those phenomena in the world that are most like computer data – free-floating
figures surrounded by a vacuum. It means
shallow-bonded connections in work, where employer and employee agree to
relatively short-term contracts of commitment.
Reconfigured brain development leads to an enormous influence on the way
we have sexual experiences today within the customary behavior of hooking up
with someone. In previous articles, I
have discussed how people since the beginning of the sexual revolution in the
1960’s have used sexual experiences with a series of bodies as a vehicle for
getting the variety of sensation that was formerly obtainable living in more traditional
organic living environments. In other
words, a number of different sexual bodies acted as a substitute for living
close to a forest, a mountain, a jungle, or a desert and living in a quaint
village or town with quaint textured sculptural architecture.
The
computer has added another element to this equation. By becoming configured to only be able to
absorb, on one level, the discrete stimuli from the free-floating figures of
data, yet still in need, on another level, of the grounded organic stimuli of
nature and natural phenomena, our computerized minds translate the flowing
blendable organic continual stimuli of a sexual body and a sexual experience
into the defined momentary discrete stimulus of a computer datum. You hook up with another person for a moment,
satisfy yourself in the relatively fleeting moment and then separate. The new computerized way of thinking acts as
a mold for absorbing something as apparently different from a datum as a sexual
experience. The sexual experience is
completed and then the person is back in an emotional vacuum again, free of
commitments. The connection is a
shallow-bonded clip-on connection between two highly figurized people who are
increasingly incapable of grounded deep-bonded relationships.
In
truth, Internet surfing teaches us an approach to living that involves our
constantly scanning life while making few deep-bonded grounded connections to
anyone and anything. Through Internet
surfing, we learn how to obtain fast shallow ingestions of stimuli from all
aspects of daily life. In other words,
we start living a MacLife situation. And
just like too much fast food is harmful for your physical health, so too much
fast shallow life stimuli can be harmful for your mental health.
We
could say that Internet surfing is profoundly interfering with the most
fundamental way we have had traditionally to connect to the world by making,
preserving and receiving organic imprints.
We make and receive fast shallow markings that don’t stimulate us to
life very much in a way that we can properly absorb. Nor are these markings easily preservable in
our lives or in the lives of the people around us. We are impeded in our needs to feel fully alive
and to prepare for death through the surrogate immortality of preserved organic
imprints.
Now
obviously there is some writing based on deep thinking on the Internet. Writing for which one mentally has to slow
down in order to obtain any benefit from it. The concern is that a lot of time spent
surfing the net can affect our capacity to properly absorb these deeper
articles.
The
solution is simple. Or maybe not so
simple. One has to stop playing the game
of searching the Internet with no serious purpose in mind. One has to break one’s addiction to the
Internet. It’s going to be difficult
just like withdrawing from addictions to alcohol, drugs or gambling. But life will become so much more rich and
vibrant and meaningful. This includes love
and work and relationships of all kinds.
Very simply, life will be so much more full of life.
(c) 2014 Laurence Mesirow
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