Crunch Time

The next digital technology: Us

Twenty years after predicting the switch between wired and wireless technologies, Nicholas Negroponte describes another advance that will soon seem inevitable: the convergence of “biology and silicone.” Interesting.

The loss of reverie

I'm pooped. I mean it. Our contemporary culture and its accompanying stresses has left me exhausted. Not in the physical sense, mind you, but in the mental.  The speed at which everything runs today is zapping my cognitive resistance.  What is eroding in me is attention.  I can't focus.

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment.  The thesis of a very important book by Maggie Jackson entitled Distracted posits that the way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention - the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress. She writes that

"Increasingly we are shaped by distraction...the seduction of alternative virtual universes, the addictive allure of multitasking people and things, our near religious allegiance to a constant state of motion: these are markers of a land of distraction...This is why we are less and less able to see, hear and comprehend what's relevant and permanent, why so many of us feel that we can barely keep our heads above water, and our days are marked by perpetual loose ends."

It suddenly dawned on me that I no longer waste time. My days have been subdivided into smaller and smaller units of efficient time. I have lost reverie. Reverie is a state of being lost in one's thoughts; to daydream.  When is the last time you daydreamed?  When was the last time you deeply pondered a sunset, or sprawled on the grass with your arms behind your head letting your thoughts wander with the movement of the clouds? 

If, like me, it's been a while, then you are overly distracted.  We are in essence not nurturing our inner selves when we lose reverie. I encourage you to go ahead and waste some time every day.  Don't let the efficiency bug infect you. Give yourself permission to go against the speed, expectations, and distractions of your life. Don't respond to the annoying "ping" of arriving email - stay focused on the task at hand. Shut off the television and read a book for two hours straight (think you can?). Don't check Facebook or Twitter for a whole week.  Have a three hour dinner with good friends. Let go of the guilt for wasting time.

You'll be a more interesting and deeply peaceful person as a result.

Virtual Sex

In our accelerated and fragmented culture, teens and emerging adults have started to abandon dating in favor of "hooking up". This seems to be consistent with the freedom to have multiple partners as people have friends on their Facebook profile. 

An interesting article by Douglas Haddow in Adbusters, reveals that while dating is on the decline, the use of sex toys has risen sharply:  "There is a huge proliferation in "next-generation" sex dolls.  Primarily produced by RealDoll, these are life size, 100% silicone dolls that are highly detailed, fully customizable and provide a physical experience that users find comparable to actual sex.

"David Levy, Artificial Intelligence engineer and author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, believes that these dolls will rapidly evolve into full-blown robots and that robot-human relationships will become technologically possible and socially acceptable within a mere 20 years."

This technological quandary is creating confusion as to what it means to be fully human.  Our culture and capabilities are manufacturing desires to be less than human.  What does sex really mean when it is with a robot apart from human relationship?  It means that the robot we ultimately end up having sex with is our self. 

Eight Black Swans

About a year ago I read a fascinating book entitled The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In he describes the impact of the improbable in life and our capacity to cope with it.

The term Black Swan comes from the 17th century European assumption that 'All swans are white'. In that context, a black swan was a symbol for something that was impossible or could not exist.  The Black Swan Theory (according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb) refers to high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realm of normal expectations.

Taleb's purpose in the book is to build robustness to the negative Black Swan events while exploiting the positive ones. 

The August/September 2009 issue of National Geographic's Adventure magazine describes 8 black swan events and how to survive them.  It's an interesting read.

Tsunami

Could the Cascadia subduction zone, a 680-mile fault line running off the West Coast, unleash a 2004-scale tsunami right here at home?

Drought

The American West is drying up fast. And the next megadrought may bring on the Super Dust bowl.

Avalanche

Last year a perfect storm of conditions killed three skiers, the most avalanche fatalities on ski runs in 30 years. Will climate change bring more slides to a ski area near you?

Megafire

For two decades, western wildfires have grown hotter, burned longer—and become ever more unpredictable. As the climate warms, could big blazes turn into a common hiking hazard?

Power Grid

America’s power supply is primed for an end-of-days blackout

Pandemic

Swine flu? Pffft. Epidemiologists are bracing for a far more lethal bug—one that’ll stop global travel in its tracks.

Failed State

There’s a fine line between off the beaten path and out of control. Sometimes you find it.

GPS System

Satellite navigation works best with 24 functioning orbiters. If several were to switch off, thousands of adventurers could go off course.

How respond to these and other inevitable black swans makes all the difference in the world.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

I found this intriguing and have attempted to explore the concepts in a previous post.

It's On

Southwest Airlines launched a new Ad Campaign on June 1st aimed at tough times. At the end of the ad a narrator intones that the airline doesn't fly around tough times. It's on, and they're ready.

It's on for all us... 

It's on every time our minds persist in discouraging thoughts.

It's on every time we think we can go it alone without the comaraderie of those who care.

It's on every time we stubbornly refuse to admit our fear and hide behind a facade of platitudes.

It's on every time we avoid nourishing our souls with silent listening, contemplation, and transcedent faith.

It's on every time our decisions preclude others who are in greater need.

It's on every time we become too enamored with our technology to solve our problems.

It's on every time we rely on massive military might to secure our happiness.

It's on every time we stop taking initiative for the health of our relationships.

It's on every time we live without grace.

This is the time of our lives. It's tough. It's on. Are you ready?

Rules for new tools

The problems we face as humans are as common and enduring as our race itself.  Take the problem of communication.  Though we have developed various tools over the millenia (cave drawings, smoke signals, pony express, telegraph, etc.) to aid us in our quest to communicate one with another, ultimately the problem persists. 

That is to say, though the problems remain the same, it's the TOOLs that have changed.  Today we live in a world of overwhelming technological tools. I'm intrigued by the criteria Wendall Berry has put forth for aquiring new tools (including technological). This is taken from his article, Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer, which is a great article in itself, and caused quite a stir when he published it.

Hope it provokes your thinking as you migrate across the quandaries of contemporary life.

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

The Star of our own show

 Since one of my favorite topics is emerging culture, my radar activates when I hear two psychiatrists, Joel and Ian Gold, calling a new psychosis for our YouTube society “The Truman Show” Delusion.  There seems to be a small but growing number of psychotic patients who describe their lives as mirroring the main character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show.” 

The character, Truman Burbank, leads a very ordinary existence in the suburbs, starting from the time he was in the womb, and is being filmed for a very popular documentary show that he is unaware of and that he cannot escape.  Everything in his life, from the small product placements of advertisers to his own intimate family affairs, is scripted and put in place for the voyeuristic fascination of the world.  All those around him (actors in the show) claim ignorance or avoidance when Truman begins to suspect something isn’t quite “right” with his reality.

For sufferers, the “Truman Show” delusion is so pervasive it involves the patients entire world, and everything real is unreal.  Truman Burbank lived in a world where everyone around him were actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose was to make him the focus of the world’s attention and add to the financial coffers of advertisers. When he discovers the ruse, he desperately and deliberately tries to escape its superficiality.

We live in a dramatically different media environment today than when that movie was released ten years ago.  There is an overwhelming influx of media pervasive technologies, with cameras and microphones everywhere.  Video sharing sites and video blogs enable hundreds of thousands of people around the world to see our lives unfold in real time.  With the advent of YouTube just four years ago, personal documentaries are some of the most popular posts on the world wide web.  The popular ones add needed advertising dollars to companies bottom lines.

Like Truman, one would think that the desire to escape all that mediated pervasiveness in our lives would be greater than ever.  I mean really, who would want all that public intrusion? Yet, if truth be told, I don’t think we want to escape at all. Deep down we want to be the star of our own Truman Show.  It makes the idea of an invited and welcomed delusion one worth significant exploration...

Narcissism or Loneliness?

This morning I was reading an article in the USA Today entitled, Is narcissism on the upswing in the young?  Some research shows more young people today have "narcissistic traits" than in previous generations and is illustrated by a preoccupation with Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.   

Not everyone agrees. Cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling recently proposed that the clearest symbol of poverty today is dependence on “connections” like the Internet, Skype, and texting.  Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections.

So, is the accelerated proliferation and popularity of social media a glaring indicator of how relationally impoverished we are or does it highlight our intrinsic narcissism?  Are we just a bunch of online bums looking for love in all the wrong places?  Do we really have nothing better to do?

One possible way to answer those questions is to unplug and take a week off from cyberspace.  Self reflection has always been critical.  When all is said and done, did you missed it and why? If you didn't miss it, why?  The answer may surprise you. It may have nothing to do with narcissim or loneliness as they say at all. Adbusters is encouraging us to digitally detox our lives this week to find out what we might discover.  For seven days, reconnect with the natural world and the flesh and blood people around you.  Take a break.  See what happens. So...I guess I'll see you next week.

Nothing Like the Real Thing

A previous post I wrote highlighted the late 90's toy senstation, the Furby.  I referred to an article that mentioned the rapid technological transformations of the past few decades which have impacted the world views of children.  They didn't have any problem describing the Furby as an object that is neither animate or inanimate.  They put it in a new in-between category (that older generations have a hard time conceiving of) that was created to accomodate their technological world view.

However we categorize it though, in the end, the Furby is only just a toy and not a companion.  It can never replace the interactions we get from real puppies, bunnies, and cats.  Same can be said for nature.  There just is no technological substitute or simulation (now, anyway) for the deep pleasures that only a hike outside can provide. 

Consider a recent study be the University of Washington psychologist Peter H. Kahn, Jr. and colleagues.  Paul Bloom in the New York Times Magazine reports that the scientists put 50-inch high-definition televisions in the windowless office of faculty and staff members to provide a live view of a natural scene.  Though people liked this, health measurements regarding heart-rate recovery from stress revealed that HDTV's were shown to be worthless. No better than staring at a blank wall.  What did help with stress was giving people an actual glass window looking out upon actual greenery. 

So, I'm going to go outside.  A half-hour walk in the park will trump the best half-hour of "The Office" on TV anyday.