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Two Kinds of Reading that May Keep You from Reading

Steiner believes we have now passed through the oasis and reentered the desert, with the result that we shall be left with three kinds of reading. The first is reading for distraction – which is what makes the airport book so popular. The second is reading for information…The third kind of reading is a residue of the great age of literacy, now receding rapidly under the compulsions of the Age of Information. It requires silence, patience, a ready capacity for reflection, the training to be challenged by complexity and, above all, a willingness to suspend the distractions of the world so that reader and text may become a unity of time, space, and imagination…

Against Zuckerman’s Hope, there is Steiner’s Prophecy, which he expressed with an ominous briskness: ‘What about reading in the old, archaic, private, silent sense? This may become as specialized a skill and avocation as it was in the scriptoria and libraries of the monasteries during the so-called Dark ages.’

-Neil Postman, A Muted Celebration, from Conscientious Objection, pp. 54-55

Postman’s line of thought here ties in nicely with C.S. Lewis’ conception of (what I call) literacy vs. aliteracy. The issue in our day, in modern America, is not literacy vs. illiteracy, but literacy vs. aliteracy.

Those who read for distraction and information are not necessarily fully literate. Ironically, it is those very sorts of reading (for distraction and information) that may keep us from really reading at all.

Who Provides the Metaphors? Natural Mythology

I think it justifiable to say that in the nineteenth century, novelists provided us with most of the powerful metaphors and images of our culture. In the twentieth century, such metaphors and images have largely come from the pens of social historians and researchers.

-Neil Postman, Conscientious Objections, p. 15

In context, Postman is making the case that what has come to be known as ‘social science’ is really a narrative form of myth-building. This has continued on into the twenty-first century to be sure.

Where do you shelve Malcolm Gladwell? Is his work some form of ‘science?’ He deals with facts and statistics, right? Actually, he is a story teller. And he uses facts and statistics in order to support certain narratives. It’s not fiction, but it’s not really non-fiction either. Yet somehow it sells as a form of social science. What is Gladwell doing that fascinates us. I’ve read nearly half-a-dozen of his books, and I don’t think I’ve really learned anything from them. I’ve taken the narratives with me, but I don’t feel that I have a better grasp of real reality for having read him. If I want reality I’ll read Charles Dickens, or The Odyssey, or The Wind in the Willows.

This is not to say that the so-called social sciences have no value. They do. They can certainly have value. I started to say I had learned valuable things from my 15 college hours of psychology. But then I realized I actually haven’t. Bad example. It’s just bad stories for the most part. Especially Freud and Skinner. You remember the one about the kid who stopped breast feeding too early? Or about the mouse that learned to push a lever? Or about the Cat in the Hat with two Things? I’ll take Dr. Seuss. “A person’s a person no matter how small” is better than anything I got from my psychology classes. Anyhow.

Postman argues against the title ‘social science.’ He thinks it is misleading. I agree. But, of course, I think that science itself is pretty much always built on narrative. We won’t go there for the moment. The first important thing I want o note here is that he deems social science as ‘moral theology.’ I think natural mythology (or perhaps personal mythology) might be a better term.

The second important thing to note is that we have to figure out why it is that the symbols once supplied by fiction are now supplied by such down-to-earth mythologizing. We were not content that made up stories should serve as symbols of who we are; we now have to have real stories made up to form some sort of mythological narrative. Forgive the post-modernish me; I don’t have answers, just questions.

My hunch is that Postman was right in Technopoly in his point that Science speaks with the voice of a god in our culture. ‘Thus saith Science’ is the mark of infallibility. If one wants to speak authoritatively about anything, one must use the language of Science to do so. Therefore if one wants to create a convincing narrative, one must at least give the appearance that it is scientific.

Ironically, Amazon lists the Postman book I am quoting from under the categories of ‘Social Science’ and ‘Sociology’ – two of the very categories he is arguing against.

Five More Questions to Ask of Technologies

I’ll warn you ahead of time that this post is pretty much for me. I’m such a selfish blogger.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about four questions we should ask of our technologies. Andy Crouch provides five more:

(1) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world is?
(2) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world should be?
(3) What does this cultural artifact make possible [that wasn’t before]?
(4) What does this cultural artifact make impossible (or at least very difficult)?
(5) What new forms of culture are created in response to this artifact?

-Culture Making, pp. 29-30ff

You could remember these with MAR:

  • Make possible/impossible
  • Assume is/should be
  • Result

Now let’s be reminded of the four basic questions of Marshall McLuhan (as summarized by Mark Federman):

We used RODE to remember those questions:

Revive, Opposite, Displace, Extend:

  • What does the technology revive?
  • What is is the opposite that it may revert to? (I’m particularly fond of this one)
  • What does it displace?
  • What does it extend?

I like asking questions; and these are all good ones to ask.

Ignoring What You Notice, Noticing What You Ignore

The challenge is a tricky one: We must create an anti-environment so that we can ignore what we notice and notice what we ignore.

-Mark Federman, The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village

So, yesterday I mentioned the idea of purposeful ignore-ance: cultivating a life that intentionally ignores some things so that it can focus its attention on others. This is where the idea leads. We do not want to ignore things to the point that we become completely oblivious to them. Rather, we want to notice what we ignore while being able to ignore what we notice.

Federman makes the point that this demands the creation of an ‘anti-environment.’ If you are submerged in an environment, you will either not ignore what you notice or not notice what you are ignoring. That entails complete assimilation on the one hand or blind acceptance on the other. The one means that you buy in completely to the environment. The other means that the environment smuggles in its trappings right under your nose.

Ignore-ance

…Everyone is vying for the most precious and valuable commodity to be sought – our attention. Think about it: Every advertiser, every potential vendor and company desperately wants your attention, and will go to great, and sometimes outrageous, lengths to obtain it. If attention is the most valuable commodity, our most valued asset, it may be said that the most valuable personal skill to be effective these days is ignorance, literally ignore-ance – the ability to selectively and appropriately ignore that which is irrelevant or merely distracting.

Mark Federman, The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village

Is your attention like a tax automatically deducted? Is it something you spend without thinking? Or do you consciously choose where and how you will spend it?

Are you able to ignore? That’s a great question, and it is certainly a discipline to be cultivated. I’ve never seen ignorance on a list of spiritual disciplines, but…

Does this mean that we will ignore everything? Of course not. But it means that we will be selective in how we distribute it. Everyone is selective with their attention in some ways to be sure. The issue is making a conscious decision about where we will focus it.

More to come in the next post…

Four Questions to Ask of Technologies

Building on the work of Marshall McLuhan, Mark Federman gives us four questions we should ask of any new technology:

The first probe is asked like this: What does the thing – the artefact, the medium – extend, enhance, intensify, accelerate or enable?…

A second probe: When pushed or extended beyond the limits of its potential, the new thing will tend to reverse what had been its original characteristics. Into what does the new medium reverse?…

The third Law of Media Probe: If some aspect of a situation or a thing is enhanced or enlarge, simultaneously, something else is displaced. What is pushed aside or obsolesced…?

And the final Law of Media probe: What does the new medium retrieve from the past that had been formerly obsolesced? This reflects the aphorism that, ‘there’s nothing new under the sun,’ and essentially asks, ‘How did we react as a society the last time we saw a medium with analogous effects?’

-Mark Federman, The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village

So, if you want to ask good questions and really think about a new technology or trend, you ask, What does it extend? What is the opposite it might reverse to? What does it displace? What does it revive from the past?

You can probably remember that with the acronym RODE: Revive, Opposite, Displace, Extend

Of course, McLuhan would probably tell me I know nothing of his work… (If you’ve never seen Annie Hall, please watch the video at this LINK to humor me).