To refresh your memory, here’s my “sum the sum” from part 7 of my summary of Hamlet’s Blackberry:
- According to Neil Postman, all of twentieth century child psychology research has been mere commentary on the basic childhood paradigm.
- Here’s Bowlby’s “comment”: Early safe and secure attachment relationships with a predictable, consistent, and available attachment figure (typically the mother) often lead (if all goes well) to open and flexible Inner Working Cognitive Models later in life.
- According to Postman, in saying what we wish a child to become, we are saying what we are.
- According to Postman, embedded in every tool is an ideological bias.
- According to both Postman and Nicholas Carr, book learning is biased toward the development of Executive Function Skills with their focus on logical thinking, reflective thinking, delaying gratification, self-control, etc.
- According to both Postman and Carr, the postmodern desire for liberation from book technology also amounts to a liberation from development of Executive Function Skills, and, in specific, development of cognitive models or theories.
- According to Postman, the function of theories is to oversimplify, and thus to assist believers in organizing, weighting, and excluding information.
- However, Postman allows that a flood of information can overwhelm even the most powerful and robust model or theory.
- Postman argues that we are in the midst of a media war that expresses a desire to liberate all information from such things as context, organization, and theory.
- Sadly, children are the main casualties of this media war, rendering them incapable of learning as defined by the old print media worldview.
- Equally sad, rather than taking responsibility for their media war, adults are increasingly scapegoating children by blaming them for their inability to learn, to organize their thoughts, to form models of the world, to focus attention, etc.
- This scapegoating is mapped by the widespread practice of medical and psychology professionals feeding copious amounts of psychotropic drugs to children.
- According to Postman, a new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.
Before we get started with part 8, a quick “station break” if you will. Two short articles came across my desk recently that are germane to the topic at hand: the analog–digital divide. Here they are:
Modest results in a program to reduce kids’ screen time
Here are the four reasons given in the first article (by Dr. Ni) to turn off the TV:
- TV is bad news for your heart—apparently the presence of a TV in a home suggests its occupants will experience long periods of time sitting, which is bad for heart health.
- TV is linked to bad eating habits—apparently there is a link between watching TV and eating bad foods.
- Background TV has a negative impact on learning—apparently infants and young children have a heard time making out the structure and purpose of language when it is experienced as a background noise as opposed to a face-to-face interaction.
- There are so many other fun things to do than watch TV!—fun things listed: take a class, go outdoors for a walk or bike ride, read a book (sound familiar), make an elaborate meal (sound familiar again), have a game night with friends, and simply have a face-to-face conversation.
The second article (by Andrew Seaman) talks more about the relationship between screen time and obesity. The article defines “screen time” as viewing a TV, computer screen, or video game. The article profiles a program designed to reduce screen time as a way of reducing not only child and adult obesity, but also problems with language development. Apparently there is a link between youth screen time and the possibility youth will start behaviors such as smoking. Seaman quotes Dr. Catherine Birken, a pediatrician at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, when he states: “These are really important health outcomes in young children, so we need to know what works and what doesn’t.”
I mention the above two articles as a way of pointing out that there are important public health reasons for studying the analog–digital divide, and that there are programs out there that are trying to reduce the adverse affects of too much screen time.
OK, lets get started with part 8 of my multi-part summary of William Powers’ book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. Fair warning: I will be moving through Powers’ treatment of technological revolutions throughout time at a breakneck speed. If my descriptions are too brief, please grab a copy of Hamlet’s Blackberry and consult this material (which starts at page 81) for yourself.
Powers begins his section on technological revolutions by mentioning that before the rise of Greek and Roman culture, oral traditions prevailed. Today when mothers and fathers read to their children, they are tapping into ancient oral traditions. Oral traditions were (and still are) centrally about creating and sharing collective stories in small groups. These collective stories were in essence a “shared mind” or “series of shared images” uniting a small group. Powers reminds us that oral traditions were (and are) a form of communication technology.
The next big revolution comes from none other than the Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates is credited with developing the communication technology “known today as the Socratic method” (quoting Powers on page 87). Today many mental health professionals use the Socratic method, which, simply, is a “question-and-answer technique” (quoting Powers again). But it’s more than just a question-and-answer technique: it’s a technique that uses questions that will stimulate what mental health professionals call “thinking about thinking” or “reflective thinking.” Therapists use thinking about thinking or reflective thinking to encourage psychological insight in their clients.
OK, lights should be going off. Yup, thinking about thinking and reflective thinking are Executive Function Skills. So, Socrates developed a question-and-answer technique designed to encourage Executive Function Skills. Trial attorneys will often quip, “Never ask a question that you do not know the answer to.” Trial attorneys use the Socratic Method to get witnesses to think about their thinking in a way that gives them the best chance of obtaining favorable testimony. Suffice it to say that good trial attorneys need both excellent Executive Function Skills and a command of the Socratic method.
To sum up, the oral tradition technology was about getting a small, face-to-face group to think about a group mind. The Socratic method came along and, through a question and answer session, was more about getting an individual to think about or reflect upon his or her individual mind. Today, parents use the oral tradition when reading to their kids, and trial attorneys and mental health professionals use the Socratic method when working with witnesses and clients/patients respectively. Lets cover one more communication technology revolution—written language—before wrapping up part 8.
On page 95, Powers states:
Oral communication was a great success, but it gave rise to a new problem of physical distance, rooted in the fact that conversation could happen only in close proximity to others. As civilization expanded, it became increasingly useful and important for people to communicate across great distances. … Written language solved the problem of physical distance by allowing words and ideas to travel anywhere and arrive intact, exactly as originally recorded. … It allowed individuals to experience other people and their ideas at a distance, in a private, reflective way.
Interestingly, Powers points out that Socrates took a dim view of written language. According to Powers, Socrates issued warnings along the lines of, “Whereas conversation is all about back-and-forth, written language is a one-way street: Once a thought is written down, it’s frozen and you can’t challenge it or change its position.” Lets listen in as Powers talks about why Socrates took the position he did:
What led Socrates to this narrow, pessimistic view of writing? He failed to understand that new connective technologies come along to solve genuine problems, and those problems usually have something to do with distance. In primitive times, the problem had been psychic distance; people were trapped in their own thoughts without an effective way to express themselves. Conversation solved this problem by allowing them to put their thoughts into words that could be shared and understood.
So here are two key points from Powers’ work to keep in mind as we continue to look at technological revolutions across time:
- New connective technologies come along to solve genuine problems.
- Genuine problems usually have something to do with distance.
I would add one more:
- Solving the problem of distance usually involves levels of abstraction.
In other words, one way to solve the problem of increasing distance is to increase levels of abstraction. Above Powers writes the following about written language: “[Written language] allowed individuals to experience other people and their ideas at a distance, in a private, reflective way.” I think Powers would agree that when we experience people through written language, we experience an abstracted version of people.
So, channeling Socrates here, three questions pop to mind concerning the current analog–digital divide:
- What’s the problem that digital technologies attempt to solve?
- What’s the “distance” aspect of this problem?
- Are solutions being brought about through greater levels of abstraction?
I’ll end here. Here’s my sum the sum for part 8:
- Here are four reasons to turn off the TV: heart issues, eating issues, learning issues, and fun issues.
- One of the first communications technologies centered on the oral tradition. This technology is used today as parents read to their kids.
- Socrates developed the Socratic method of question and answer sessions. Trial lawyers and mental health therapists tend to use the Socratic method.
- According to Powers, written language came along allowing “individuals to experience other people and their ideas at a distance, in a private, reflective way.”
- According to Powers, new connective technologies come along to solve genuine problems.
- According to Powers, genuine problems usually have something to do with distance.
- I would add that solving the problem of distance usually involves levels of abstraction. In addition, when we experience people through abstraction, we are not experiencing the whole person. Something is always left out as a part of the process of going from what communications experts call “high bandwidth communication” (i.e., face-to-face interaction) to “low bandwidth communication” (i.e., the dots and dashes of Morse code).
- As we continue to investigate the analog–digital divide, it would be wise to keep the following question in mind: What’s the problem that digital technologies attempt to solve?
Stay tuned for part 9. 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. Or if you have answers to the following questions, we’d love to hear them:
- What’s the problem that digital technologies attempt to solve?
- What’s the “distance” aspect of this problem?
- Are solutions being brought about through greater levels of abstraction?
