After finishing The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and reading halfway through Amusing Ourselves to Death, I began to notice a familiar pattern forming regarding the main points of both of these books. Although one book focuses on the effects of the Internet and the other concentrates on the effects of television, they both discuss the consequences that these forms of media have on our minds and our society. Both books portray these relatively new technologies in a negative light because of the harmful effects they have on our way of thinking. Nevertheless, we continue to use them because they have become a permanent part of our culture, and most of us are completely unaware of the problems they create. Postman and Carr also agree that a society that is dependent on print as their main medium for public discourse is more sophisticated and logical than a society that relies on electronic media. It seems that as technology continues to advance, new and smarter intellectual technologies will only attempt to make life easier which ironically makes life more difficult in the long run.
Despite the overwhelming evidence proving that electronic media is a danger to rational thought, I believe that television and the Internet have the potential to be used to nurture the human mind. If television programs—other than those that are purely created for entertainment—were not aired for the sole purpose of making money and instead focused on better informing their viewers, television would actually be an appropriate medium for spreading relevant information. Furthermore, the Internet, with the endless amount of information it holds, could be an important tool for learning just about anything if it wasn't controlled by greed. The reason why electronic media are so distracting is because they are easier platforms for advertising. For example, sustained reading on the Internet wouldn't be so difficult if the text wasn't filled with hyperlinks and if advertisements didn't cover the margins of each page. In addition, television would be more informative if commercials didn't interrupt shows every few minutes. On the other hand, placing advertisements in printed books doesn't make any sense because authors write books as a way of sharing their ideas with their readers and are usually not particularly concerned with making large sums of money. Advertisements are present in newspapers and magazines, but they don't demand attention with the same intensity as advertisements on television and the Internet. Even though Carr and Postman are correct in saying that these technologies have changed our way of thinking, almost all the negative effects that are associated with these forms of media are not directly caused by the devices themselves. Instead, I believe that the television and Internet are explicitly vulnerable to the avarice that is clearly the true culprit.
Maximilian Kallas
You are making an important point, Maximillian. Both media -- television and internet -- have been developed and continue to evolve with the market in mind, and not for the elevation of the human spirit. It boggles my mind when I think about how much GOOD could come from television and the internet if it was oriented differently -- in a way that strengthened our communities and fed our common (perhaps latent) desire to be better, to be good people, to be bigger and more generous on the inside.
ReplyDeleteOf course they've been developed with the market in mind, it's a great business platform. Even with that said I still feel like it has great learning opportunities. In a sense the internet is like a library, sure you can pick out magazines and comic books to read for entertainment, but if you really wanted to learn then you'd search for an enlightening read. The internet is the same and more because it contains just about every book you can obtain, you can take tons of education classes, you can brush up on the known history of man, and we've had so much more growth for all of this. It's great. If you want products you can easily obtain them, if you came for knowledge you can easily obtain that. Commercials on t.v. should hardly effect you. If anything if you were watching some informative show the statements they make could be more impactful because you get time to think about them. I don't think that making the internet a "Learn only" place would make a difference because the same people who didn't come to the internet to learn are not going to go to this theoretical internet to learn either. Life is full of what ifs but most of the time there will always be several choices that you can make at any time that would lead to the same result. So those what ifs tend to be senseless doubts caused by regret, paranoia, and/or frustration which are all a personal matter. I think the internet is a good balancing of learning and business and we're right where we need to be.
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