More on the internet.

Following up on my post the other week about the impact of technology on the human condition, Maureen Dowd has an excellent column up about the empathy-destroying powers of the internet. She quotes Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains*:

“Researchers say that we need to be quiet and attentive if we want to tap into our deeper emotions. ... If we’re constantly interrupted and distracted, we kind of short-circuit our empathy. If you dampen empathy and you encourage the immediate expression of whatever is in your mind, you get a lot of nastiness that wouldn’t have occurred before.”

This is exactly what Wallace and Franzen talk about.** And untangling what is going on here is very important, I think; I'm quite disturbed by the sheer amount of cruelty people on the internet seem to delight in directing at each other. I'm always wondering, what are these people like in their every day lives? If I could confront them, and ask them point blank, in an honest desire to know -- dude, what the fuck?, what would they say? What is their level of consciousness about how mean and awful they are being? To what extent do they behave like this in real life, to actual people they see around them? Undoubtedly there are a lot of bitter, nasty people out there that the internet simply brings out the best in, so to speak. But then it seems the internet is also a lot like road rage -- for some people, being locked into this virtual world pushes the off button on a lot of suppressed ugliness that has not been fully dealt with. Or so it would appear.

Anyway, here is Wallace discussing another aspect of the same issue, particularly relevant from 2:10 on:

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* I noticed Dowd does not italicize the title of the book in her article (but rather quotes it), although I checked, and indeed it is a book - is this something else the internet has done? Has the distinction between how to present an article or blog post title and how to present a book title also been obliterated?, and now I am merely being a fusty, quaint academic by insisting on the distinction?

** I know I keep bringing up Wallace and Franzen, and I look a little stuck on them. That is because I am. No point in denying that. I'll probably blog in the near future more extensively as to why I am so drawn to them at the moment.

Media technology; an infinite jest?

In the past six months or so, I have added the issue of technology – especially the technology of media, ie TV to facebook  - to the docket of things I think about. This was inspired mostly by the commentary of Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, two authors I’ve started to read after a whole lifetime of almost totally ignoring literature. Simply put, neither Franzen or Wallace are Luddites (and the way in which this term is used is actually a disservice to the actual Luddites, who were about much more thoughtful and noble ideas than simply disliking technology), but they both articulate a concern that media technology, while having its uses, distracts Americans from both civic engagement and sustained confrontation with the existential questions that all of us must try to address to fully face our humanity. As Jonathan Franzen puts it, “There is some part of me, if I spend all day online, [which] is even lonelier than when I started.”

I myself have a rather ambiguous relationship with the internet in particular. Ever since my undergraduate years, the internet – particularly through the venue of blogging and, online discussions on such social networking sites as facebook – has offered me both one of the most powerful tools of self-expression and also the most acute reminder of how limited that self-expression can often be. It has been both the symbol of connectivity with the outside world and the ultimate symbol of loneliness. In particularly sad times, which always corresponded with a feeling of invisibility, the specter of being surrounded by blank monitors, totally unresponsive to and uninterested in my existence, would present itself to me in my daymares. But obviously here I am, still blogging away – for the internet has also provided me with some of the best opportunities to make connections to other likeminded people, and to have my own views challenged and refined. As the title of this blog suggests, it is part of what keeps my isolation incomplete. 

I try, however, to balance this with activities that depend on and cultivate the type of solitude that actually leads you to being more, rather than less aware of the world around you. It is important to always keep in mind, and thus try to mitigate, the tendencies of media technology to whittle the entire world down to you – to keep you so focused on yourself that actual human empathy becomes increasingly more difficult. Thus this recent column by Maureen Dowd at The New York Times caught my eye. The column mostly flirts ironically with the humor of a new iPhone application designed to make Catholic confession more user-friendly and to encourage the faithful to attend more often. However, the column brings up an unspoken question that both critics from the right and the left like to tackle: will technology ultimately, and inherently, erode human relationships and the fabric of the concept of the larger good?