To refresh your memory, here’s my “sum the sum” from part 9 of my summary of Hamlet’s Blackberry:
- Squeeze-and-pop patterns are about how when the body is traumatized, a desire to escape into the dissociative worlds that open as a result of that trauma, is created.
- Squeeze-and-pop patterns have been around since the beginning of recorded history.
- Squeeze-and-pop patterns have resulted in such conceptual systems as written language, ethics, religion, science, and now, postmodernism.
- A question that confronts us all today is, “What’s the squeeze that is opening up the digital conceptual world?”
- Authors like Mary Eberstadt argue that such things as a Home-alone America should be viewed as possible squeezes.
- Authors like Richard Louv argue that kids are being squeezed in a way that makes them afraid of natural environments (like the outdoors) while at the same time enticed by artificial, digital environments.
- Trauma expert Robert Pynoos argues that trauma narratives (such as the Icarus myth) have been around since the beginning of recorded history. In my opinion, trauma narratives reflect the process of squeeze-and-pop.
- Powers argues that new technologies will ultimately form new crowds.
- Gutenberg developed technologies, like portable relic mirrors and the printing press, to solve the crowd problem.
- Gutenberg’s printing press ushered in the conceptual world of book reading. Here are the main characteristics of the book reading worldview (according to Neil Postman):
- We should develop a vigorous sense of individuality, a vigorous sense of self.
- We should develop an ability to think logically and sequentially.
- We should be able to distance ourselves from symbols, that is to say, not take the symbol for what is symbolized (with a tip of the hat to Joseph Campbell).
- We should be able to manipulate high orders of abstraction.
- We should be able to delay gratification (a key Executive Function Skill).
- We should be able to engage in self-control (another key Executive Function Skill).
- The book reading worldview encourages development of the upper brain, Executive Function Skills of planning, delaying gratification, perspective taking, empathy, time travel, etc.
- The book reading worldview is giving way to the digital conceptual world, but I think most are hard pressed to tell us anything substantive about how the digital conceptual world should fashion the person.
- Powers simply asks, “The question now is how truly individual—as in bold, original, unique—you can be if you never step back from the crowd.”
- The opening of the digital conceptual world carries with it the illusion of liberation that actually seeks to bind one tighter to the mass mind.
Lets get started with part 10 of my multi-part summary of William Powers’ book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.
On page 147, Powers presents this “take home” observation concerning technological revolutions across time:
Older technologies often survive the introduction of newer ones, when they perform useful tasks in ways that the new devices can’t match.
In earlier parts of this blog series, I provide the following examples of how earlier technologies are still used today because, simply, there are no appropriate substitutes:
- When parents read to their children, they are using and preserving the oral tradition.
- When therapists and trial attorneys engage in a form of question and answer designed to encourage clients to think about their thinking in certain ways, they are using and preserving the Socratic dialogue tradition.
- When children and adults read printed books, they are using and preserving the printed word tradition.
As simple as it may sound, when a parent reads a story to his or her child from a book, and asks the child to think about what is going on in that story, that parent not only builds a connection to technological revolutions across time but also connects the child to those connections. I would suggest that this “meta-connection” process forms the foundation upon which the Executive Function Skill of mental time travel is built. Powers offers up a simple example of meta-connection on page 148 when he talks about, of all things, a hinged door. Powers makes the point that since the birth of science fiction back in the 1920s, such stories have predicted the end of the old fashion dull hinged door in favor of the very futuristic and sexy sliding door (think 1960s Star Trek sliding doors with that sound that was also used to announce a tomato being successfully sucked into a bottle for Heinz Catsup commercials of that same time era). Lets listen in.
[A]s you’ve undoubtedly noticed, hinged doors are still very much with us. Why? Because though sliding doors are aesthetically appealing, when you come down to it, they do only one thing, slide in and out, which is kind of boring. Hinged doors are more interesting precisely because of the way they occupy and move thropugh space. You can burst through one and surprise somebody. You can slam a hinged door loudly to vent your anger or close it quietly out of concern for a sleeping child. A hinged door is an expressive tool. It works with our bodies in ways that sliding doors don’t.
In essence, a hinged door is archetypal: It captures an essence of who we are as human beings that transcends space and time. In an earlier post I mentioned that cognitive linguists draw a connection between a body moving through a natural setting and the movement captured in the printed word. George Lakoff calls this “embodied cognition” (more on this below). Like the hinged door, the printed word is an expressive tool in that it works with our bodies in ways that eBooks do not. But, in fairness to eBooks, they do express body dissociated from mind. In this way eBooks are archetypal in that they capture the essence of a time characterized by dissociation or mind separated from body. In one of his last books before his passing Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1964), Carl Jung referred to the collective phenomenon of Things Seen in the Sky as “not bodies” or “weightless thoughts.” So, some technologies will undoubtedly express body while others will express not bodies or weightless thoughts. Is it possible that we have entered a period of time exemplified by Things Seen in the Internet? As Powers puts it on page 153, “We’re physical creatures who perceive and know the world through our bodies, yet we now spend much of our time in a universe of disembodied information. It doesn’t live here with us, we just [voyeuristically] peer at it through a two-dimensional screen.” In a statement that would make Jung proud, Powers gives us this “bottom line”: “At a very deep level of the consciousness, this [voyeurism] is arduous and draining.”
On page 153, Powers mentions a theory known as embodied interaction. Suffice it to say that embodied interaction shares a lot in common with the idea of embodied cognition (mentioned above). Embodied interaction theory holds that “three-dimensional tools [e.g., those firmly within time and space] are easier on the mind in certain important ways” (quoting Powers). Lets listen in as Powers explains why this is so:
This makes intuitive sense. Think of a screen with a dozen different documents open, all layered on top of one another, and what a pain it is to try to organize and keep track of them all at once, using just your clicker and keyboard. Sometimes you want to reach in there and grab them, but you can’t [which is generally true with respect to the process of objectification]. Reading and writing on screen, we expand a great deal of mental energy just navigating. Paper’s tangibility allows the hands and fingers to take over much of the navigational burden, freeing the brain to think. Because a notebook [full of paper pages] has a body, it works more naturally with our bodies.
In essence, Powers is talking about what cognitive scientists call “the procedural brain.” Surgeons could not do surgery without the procedural brain. Pilots could not fly without the procedural brain. People who use cars for transportation could not drive without the procedural brain. The next time you drive anywhere in your car, when you get to your destination, ask yourself, “How did I just do that?” The procedural brain could be looked at as the “body brain.” And, as you would expect, the body brain is not open to conscious reflection. But as the activities of surgery, flying, and driving clearly point out, there is a dynamic and very necessary relationship between the body brain and the so-called “mind brain.” What Powers points to is how screen technologies carry with them the potential to dramatically disrupt the dynamic relationship between body brain and mind brain. We see this dramatically expressed in an area of increasing public concern: texting and driving. Texting and driving could be looked at as a clash between Jung’s not body, weightless thoughts and the body or procedural brain. Sadly, clash can (and often does) lead to crash.
On page 154 Powers makes the following connection:
What Hamlet’s tables [e.g., a book containing easily erasable pages] and my [paper page] notebooks share is this: each is an effective way of bringing an unruly, confusing world of stimuli and information under control. In Shakespear’s time, it was the bedlam of the crowded city and the pressures of the emerging print culture. Today, it’s the bottomless inbox, the ringing of cell phones, and just the weight of all the weightless [e.g., Jung’s not body or weightless thoughts] digital stuff.
After reading the above quote I cannot help but think about the child or adult suffering from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). People suffering from ADHD live in a “confusing world of stimuli and information” that they are largely powerless to bring “under control” (quoting Powers). Sadly, rather than find a Hamlet’s table or a notebook full of paper pages that could help a child or adult bring order and coherence to an otherwise confusing world of stimuli and information, we (meaning the mental health community) feed them powerful psychotropic medications like Ritalin and Adderall. In doing so we blame the individual for the blowback we are experiencing as we continue to enter the uncharted waters of the digital age.
In part 7 of this series I mentioned the work of Neil Postman, author of the book Technopoly. In Technopoly, Postman argues that we are in the midst of what he calls a “psychic battle,” one where
there are many casualties—children who can’t learn to read or won’t, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to [e.g., focus their attention on] lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side—at least for the moment.
Postman gives us this “bottom line”: “When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.” Rather than educate people about and prepare them for “world-views in collision,” we numb them to the realities of this clash by feeding them potent, mind-numbing psychotropic drugs. We’re feeding these drugs to kids as young as three and four. I guess you could call this “worldview clash profiteering.” Political commentator Naomi Klein uses the term disaster capitalism.
All of this opens up an opportunity for philanthropists: 1) educate people about and prepare them for “world-views in collision,” and 2) help them find solutions like Hamlet’s table or a notebook full of paper pages that could help bring order and coherence to an otherwise confusing world of stimuli and information.
I’ll end here. Here’s my sum the sum for part 10:
- Older technologies often survive the introduction of newer ones.
- Parents still read to their children, preserving the oral tradition.
- Therapists and trial lawyers engage in reflective question and answer sessions, preserving the Socratic tradition.
- Adults and children still read books, preserving the book reading worldview.
- The hinged door has not given away to the sliding door because the hinged door works with and is more expressive of, the body as opposed to the sliding door.
- Technologies that work well with the body tend to express what cognitive scientists call “embodied cognition.”
- Today, many digital technologies express “disembodied cognition”—mind dissociated from body.
- Carl Jung calls disembodied cognition “not body” or “weightless thoughts.”
- Embodied cognition is closely associated with procedural brain or body brain.
- We use procedural brain or body brain in such areas as surgery, piloting a plane or other aircraft, and driving a car.
- There is a dynamic relationship between body brain and mind brain.
- Internet technologies tend to disrupt the dynamic relationship between body brain and mind brain.
- This disruption is seen clearly in a potentially dangerous activity such as texting and driving.
- The conceptual clash between the analog worldview and the digital worldview has left many with no way to effectively bring order and coherence to an otherwise confusing world of stimuli and information.
- Rather than help people understand the nature of the conceptual clash that surrounds them and find effective methods of dealing with such a clash, we feed children and adults copious amounts of behavioral drugs more potent than cocaine.
- Political commentator Naomi Klein calls making money off the misfortunes of others “disaster capitalism.”
Stay tuned for part 11. In part 11 we’ll look at additional ways Powers has found for bringing order and coherence to an otherwise confusing world of stimuli and information. To whet your appetite, here’s a look at a few subtitles: Positive Rituals, Making the Home a Refuge, Thermostat of Happiness, Internet Sabbath. I’ll try to get it out as soon as I possibly can. In the mean time, consider reading Powers’ book Hamlet’s Blackberry. If you have read Hamlet’s Blackberry, feel free to leave your comments concerning the information that Powers presents.
