Fifteenth century blogging.
While a fan of the Internet (we have a blog and podcast, after all), I’ve been growing increasingly concerned about the disruptive potential of our hyper-connected age. Just remember what happened after Gutenberg gave up on fabricating pilgrimage mirrors and took up that printing press idea. Or remember Socrates’ lament over the loss of oral culture to writing in the Phaedrus. It seems to me that mobile computing, social media and the sharing economy have just as much potential to cause social turbulence as did writing and the printing press. While writing the printing press ended up as positive developments in the long run, the jury is still out on our computer age. On a personal note, I’ve watched, to my frustration, as this blog has lost ground to the short attention span and creepy data harvesting tentacles of Facebook and other social media platforms.
So what can we do? Perhaps it’s futile, but I thought I’d devote some time in the next few weeks to developing skills that run counter to the prevailing technological winds. I’m hoping to, as George Clinton put it, “Free my mind so my ass will follow.” At the very least I’d like to enhance my own skills in these areas, but I’d also like to develop some classes or gatherings around these topics. And I’m hoping to reduce screen time.
The beginning of this strategy was to come up with a bucket list of the skills our Silicon Valley overlords are supplanting through new technologies. I thought of these four counter-cultural skills:
1. Memory
I’ve written about memory before. The important thing to note about it is that memory is a creative act, not a boring rote skill. It’s a way of expanding your mind’s creativity. And it’s relatively easy to learn. It’s also, of course, atrophying under our constant access to “the cloud.”
2. Wayfinding
GPS, and mobile technology are raising a generation that will no longer know how to get around without their phones. Like memory, wayfinding is a creative act. In the West we get hung up on maps, a relatively recent technology. If you look at indigenous cultures you’ll see that wayfinding is more about telling stories about the landscape. Think of the Polynesian’s abilities to cross vast distances, without maps or GPS, between tiny islands. Their wayfinding technique was about a relationship with nature: with the stars, the subtleties of ocean swells, the migratory patterns of birds, the movements of fish, the coloration of the ocean. What powers of imagination and observation are lost when we depend on maps and, worse, a talking computer?
3. Handwriting
Most states in the US no longer require children to learn handwriting (my own state of California still teaches cursive along with just a handful of others). But what will be lost in a world we only interact with via a keyboard and mouse? What will happen to our fine motor skills? My own handwriting is abysmal:
4. Contemplation
Reclaiming the contemplative moments of our lives is out of my area of expertise and a bit off topic for this blog, but it’s still very important to me. I wrote about it when I covered the topic of acedia (a more precise way of defining distraction), and I’ll leave it at that for now.
A cranky conclusion
I’ve noticed that when the press covers the constant state of distraction our technology has put us in, they tend to immediately jump to neuroscience studies to understand why we’re addicted to checking our email, phones, etc. While I have no doubt there are neurological phenomena at work here, we also need to look at the sociological and spiritual issues surrounding the skills we’re losing. We can’t forget that the forces that want to keep us in a state of distraction or acedia, and constantly glued to our screens, have economic and social agendas. They are harnessing acedia to sell us crap we don’t need and harvest our personal data for their financial gain.
But I also don’t want to come off as a Luddite. I like the community that this blog has formed, as well as the great people I’ve met through resources like Meetup.com. And I know a few people who use social media in a very positive and uplifting way (which should, perhaps, be the subject of a future blog post).
So what do you think? What skills did I leave out? How is your relationship to technology evolving?
I seem to recall reading recently that kids who spend too much time interacting with people online instead of IRL are reduced in their ability to read facial expressions/cues and such.
People’s spelling/written grammar also seems to have gotten much more atrocious, and I can’t always chalk it up to autocorrect oopsies.
I somehow want to add something along the lines of “parenting skills”. My kids aren’t wired up, and I get constant comments of amazement at how well they do in waiting rooms and such just doing old school things like reading or coloring etc. My kids will also interact with the adults in the room. The people commenting contrast that with every other kid they see, right on down to the toddlers, that comes in with their nose in the gizmo, and almost never takes their eyes off it the whole time they are there. People who work in restaurants will notice the same thing.
Vision. Related to the above. More kids (and adults) also having vision problems due to constantly looking at screens a fixed distance from their face. Peripheral vision and near/far vision both get screwed up in the process.
Posture. See above. Fixed distance with head hanging down for so long.
Oh, and another angle about restaurants, a recent study in one restaurant showed that the reason for increased customer wait times was that instead of people sitting down, reading the menu and ordering etc, they all sit down, take pictures, text, take pictures of the menu, waiter comes, they aren’t ready, but can you take pics of us all with everyone’s phone? Waiter will then return at a later point once everyone does look at the menu, food is ordered, food delivered to table, then another round of gizmoness as everyone takes pics of food and texts/instagrams/whatever to friends. And so on, and so forth. So, essentially, each party takes longer to cycle through as a result. Less turnover = longer waittimes.
And one more, just for fun…thumbs on mittens, because, MUST. TEXT. ALWAYS. 😉
I’m with you on the grammar and spelling issue.
I readily admit that I am hyper-aware of language usage – studying a half-dozen languages at university focuses one’s attention on even the smallest details – but the most common on-line mistakes are of the kind that should have been sorted out by third grade: their/there/they’re, its/it’s, your/you’re, verbs that don’t match subjects, sentences without subjects, and on and on.
My kids, of course, roll their eyes at all this.
My position is that language facilitates communication; following the rules of your language facilitates clear and accurate communication. In our house, it falls on deaf ears and rolling eyes.
I agree re: parenting. I keep a close eye on my son’s screen time (and he only watches DVDs or clips with me when we’re researching something, and listens to audiobooks and actual radio), and people are constantly talking about how “well-behaved” he is. What they’re really noticing is that he’s engaged and active and interested and interactive, so he self-corrects if he’s starting to act in a way that bothers people (not always, of course!).
Movement in general is heavily compromised in most people as a set of skills. It’s not JUST postural problems from sitting still so much–it’s also the plain fact that a lot of people don’t do free-movement manual labor anymore. Contrast a skilled someone using a scythe vs. people using a push mower–it’s not that the scythe is really more work (and it can be just as quick), but it involves multiple rotations along the spine, in the shoulders and hips, and smaller adjustments. It’s a total-body way of working, instead of a linear, restricted manual labor that relies on body movements and control in basically a forward/backward plane of motion. This is then emphasized when people “work out” in a gym or at home, because even now most forms of exercise being taken up in the US are along that same forward/backward plane instead of requiring responsiveness and control and power through a full 360-degrees.
That’s why I’ve slowly switching to hand tools in all of my daily tasks, and trying to consciously work in ways that engage the whole body in multiple planes and in rotational movements. It can take longer and be more tiring, but I see the health benefits from incorporating healthy movement as an important aspect of work.
Memory, wayfinding, handwriting, and contemplation as skill sets have been slowly declining for centuries (if not longer). The printing press has been a big factor, but I suspect the disruption of the Internet (oddly, I was thinking recently that it’s almost like we’re living in another Reformation-type period, and that upheaval was a direct result of the printing press and the changes it forced in all of Europe’s social institutions). But then, even at the time the printing press was invented, Europeans weren’t receiving the intensive memory training of more oral societies.
Wayfinding is a difficult skill to maintain or teach when living in a more urbanized society. So much of developing a natural sense of “north” has to do with being outside from sunrise to sunset for days on end, in the same basic location. I’ve read of people who were able to develop their “north” by taping a map of their local area to their desk and orienting it all toward north, but I haven’t tried it myself.
I’d add observation. While visual training will increase someone’s sensitivity to peripheral signals, the act of observation is an engaged, creative act. We pick up details we practice looking for. Drawing or sketching can be a really effective way to train observational skills.
Also, hand skills in general. Fine motor skills are seriously declining, to the point where medical school professors talk about having problems teaching students to reach the level of coordination and control necessary to perform surgeries. While this could be that whole “kids these days are not like kids two decades ago” thing, I’ve also seen children struggling more with tasks requiring fine motor skills than I remember noticing when I first started working with kids. This would tie into declines in handwriting proficiency (and is why handwriting, art, music and other subjects that require hand skills are SO important in schools).
My apologies for the length. This is an area I’ve thought a lot about since leaving the tech industry eleven years ago!
I’m not sure I could add anything. But we as a family have made a concerted effort to maintain some of these skills. My sons weren’t taught cursive, so I’m making sure my daughter is. We are learning to can and make our own food. Ive found my way back to handwork, and am teaching our kids. I was never in favor of handheld games or lots of screen time, so it didn’t happen. I love my kindle., but we use our library too. Its a balance between old and new, and some things should never be lost.
One: We spent too much time in front of the TV. That was suppose to rot our brain.
This last promotion meant I had to use computer tech. prior to that it was just a tool to get the job done. I figure I have mastered a lot of different things up to this point,and now to keep up, I must master my technology. Word? I master it, it doesn’t rule me nor should it rule my thinking. Now that I am comfortable with computer technology, it does bother me when I hear myself say ‘oh, just use your phone to…’ errrg. Slippery slope, keep up with the cursive, someday soon it will be secret code writing, like Latin, well pig latin.
On memory: learn a new poem each month. Then you can “access” (odious computer-age term) and feel inspired by literature’s most brilliant words and images while hiking, standing in line or turning the compost. I recently learned “Ozymandias.” Next up, Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Naughty limericks count too! Best wishes.
Spelling. Without auto correct, where would some poor souls be? On the flip side, without auto correct, we’d have fewer funnier texts on the occasion, but that’s not the point here. Spelling is suffering as we rely on MS Office products, and auto correct to catch all the errors.
Math. well over a decade ago, when I was in jr college and then later at UT studying mechanical engineering, I could do a great deal of math in my head. Calculators were not always allowed for computation while taking tests, as the teacher wanted to ensure you understood how to solve the problem yourself. Fast forward to today and I use a calculator for simple addition. Some days I challenge myself to mentally compute tips, change, or tax (approximately) before the person/computer/cash register/phone calculator does, but not as much as I should to stay sharp. I recently signed up for some extra classes with my dance troupe. The teacher had 1 class going for 6 weeks, and another going for 8 weeks. Both classes were $5/week. I told her I wanted to pay the sum upfront for both classes. She said that would be great, but she had NO idea how much the total would actually be, because…math. she didn’t really do it without a calculator. Sigh. I added it all up and spread the word to the class as to what the total would be, so that they could figure out how much they owed if they weren’t paying the total up front that evening. I read the Arch Druid Report and he has often extolled the use of a slide rule as a tool for ‘collapse-able’ computing and for understanding how the computations work. I am entirely intrigued by this, to the point where I now own a slide rule and high school math textbook from the 1950s to start studying. I haven’t begun yet, but it’s on the list.
I second Kat for Observation. I visited the national air and space museum a few years ago during a trip to DC. My attention to the marvelous items and knowledge they had displayed there was greatly divided all day. This was because I couldn’t devote all my attention to the wonders of the museum, I had to be on constant watch for the hordes of people walking around, phone first, so absorbed in taking video of the things they were supposed to be looking at, or taking selfies of themselves being at the museum, that if I did not move out of their way, they would walk right into me. They didn’t see anyone in their way through the phone. They didn’t see anything in the museum through the phone actually. I found it highly ironic that in the act of trying to capture video, pictures and other memorabilia from their trip to the museum, they missed the entire museum experience and contents.
To your handwriting, I’d add letter writing. Receiving a hand written letter, composing a letter and sending it. It’s art. It’s a beautiful way to communicate. And it’s losing to email, texts and emojis. I haven’t written letters lately (2 years I’d say) but I’d like to get back into the business. I always say major bonus points if you illustrate them, and/or make your own stationary paper to write them on!
To say that I’m not very good at math is to be generous.
A few years ago I was in an incredibly long, slow-moving, line at the local pharmacy shortly after Christmas, when all holiday items were on sale. Why was the line moving so slowly? Because the teen-age clerk couldn’t figure out how to take 20% off the item in question. He and the manager toiled over the problem for at least 4 minutes – with a calculator – before they achieved success.
Even I can come up with 10% of any number and double it to make 20%. In my head. Which I learned to do in first grade under the tutelage of a nun who was at least 100 years old, or seemed to be to a 6-year-old. It is a little alarming to think that this kind of common-sense math may no longer be taught.
Oh, and regarding your comment about slide rules, I would LOVE to learn Gregg shorthand, but it seems that no one uses it or teaches it any more.
People can no longer count back change. They have to wait to see what the register says.
Re: Gregg shorthand – My stepgrandma passed away two years ago. She worked up until shortly before her death, and was the very last of the court reporters (stenographers) to do it old school using pencil/pad/shorthand. She held out past the point that they said you could no longer be put on capital offense case if you weren’t using the computer to take your notes. One judge was going to refuse using her because of it, but she said, “Test me on just one case and see if you aren’t pleased with the results”. He did, and then requested her all the time afterwards.
Memory: I love Shakespeare, so reading and attempting to memorise some favorite passages or entire sonnets is enjoyable. I’m also attempting to learn Spanish. A friend’s advice is learning one word a day to create a phrase a week and then use that phrase as often as possible.
Spelling: I work in education and notice that the students can’t spell because they do not say the word properly. How can you sound out a word to spell it when you mispronounce it? Example-ask any child to tell you the second month of the year.
Storytelling: I wish I could relate events concisely and interestingly. I just babble, not knowing where to start or where to stop. Is it an inborn talent, or something I could learn?
I second Amy’s feeling about letter writing. I have a friend (started out as a pen-pal 30+ years ago) on the other side of the world and receiving a handwritten letter is like having her over for a visit while I read. She sounds like her handwriting. So I should probably stop babbling here and write to an old friend.
If you set aside the PR problems, what’s wrong with being a Luddite? Seems they got a lot right.
Good point Bruce. They were facing the same concentration of wealth issues.
I think your concerns are entirely valid.
For many years I worked as a system designer in a development group that used the highest of high tech. The communications technology available to us was months, if not years, in advance of what was generally available to the public.
However, if we needed to discuss a problem or a design issue, we ALWAYS tried to do this face to face. The major use we made of email was to set up an appointment to talk to someone who was not currently in the office.
If a customer had a serious problem that could not be immediately resolved, the default action was to fly to the customer site and talk to them personally.
This was not technological Ludditism. It was just that we found that this way worked better and was far less liable to lead to misunderstandings and disagreement. Basically, it was cheaper, as well as resulting in greater customer satisfaction.
Over millions of years, humans have developed the ability to understand other others using all the senses to interpret speech and body language. If we reduce this to the single, narrow channel of text messaging, all this rich contextual information is lost, with frequently unfortunate results.
Maybe a slight tweak on the “contemplation” idea, but how about the ability to enjoy an experience or an interaction without DOCUMENTING it or otherwise posting about it via FB, twitter, instagram etc. I’m not talking about people with a blog/business or an otherwise focused things they are doing, but the incessant need by yer average joe/jane with a smartphone to immediately memorialize EVERYthing. A friend of mine commented that it seemed to descend into a strange version of mass “look at ME!”.
I tie this in to a study which noted that when people were sent out in the woods etc to “take pictures”, and were later asked to recall what they saw in the woods. One group was not given specific instructions, just to “take pictures”. The second group, however, was asked to find one specific, detailed thing to photograph (eg something like the closeup of a flower). The ones in the first group couldn’t recall very much about their day in comparison with the second group.
The study designers theorized it was because the first group just let the camera, in a sense, have the experience *for* them. And while the second group was also out to take a picture, they spent time examining/taking in their surroundings in order to find that one detail, so their brains were still engaged in “experience”, therefore, remembering.
In the past, it used to only be if it was a very *special* dinner/occasion that someone would have bothered to bring a camera/whip it out, but now, it’s all.the.time. People have become their own paparazzi. Maybe then, we can say a loss of comfort with a certain amount of anonimity???
I haven’t got a cell phone or any other mobile device, because I don’t need one. I realize this makes me the only American over the age of 3 who isn’t “connected”, but most days I’m too ornery to care.
I do derive some perverse pleasure in watching other people (i.e. hubby) flounder to remember phone numbers without their mobile crutch, numbers which I have safely filed away in my brain.
I’ve been trying to achieve digital downtime by limiting screen time and making sure I don’t check screens before/after specific times of the day. It’s hard, though, especially with checking news. We don’t get a physical news paper, so what might be a delimited experience reading news over breakfast becomes a time-devouring oh-just-one-more-link situation.
Pursuant to your mention of Polynesian wayfinding: do you know about the Polynesian Voyaging Society and its canoe, the Hokule’a? There’s an around-the-world trip going on right now, utilizing the techniques you’ve described. The story of how the Hokule’a came to be is also an excellent example of knowledge triumphing over obsolescence. http://www.hokulea.com/