Blog post #2

The last half of Digitized Lives is a quicker read than the first.  In fact, it felt like most of the unbiased (at least on the surface) presentations of information were in the first half of the book, making the second half feel like a greased slide of hefty opinions.  Yet while Reed claims that "this is not a book dedicated to celebrating digital cultures; it is dedicated to improving them" (151), I didn't get many ideas about how to improve digital cultures.  I guess the one idea I do have is to improve myself; but how to do that is not the purview of this book (that would be Iyanla: Fix My Life).

I did learn some nifty new terms like NetRoots and Slacktivism, and I processed another slew of thought provoking questions; but I came to the end of the book with no clearer an idea of how to think about all of this than I had going into it.  It isn't as though I need someone to tell me what to think, but I do want evidence that doesn't constantly run into a contradiction.

Perhaps the greatest contradiction is when, at the end of a book full of assertions and predictions, Reed writes,  "Anyone who tells you they know for certain what the future of new media technologies will be is full of shtml" (197). 

Hmmm. But how about these predictions?

• "If not dealt with, lack of meaningful digital access will increase all forms of poverty (economic, social and informational), and deepen all forms of inequality" (183).
• "One thing that is easy to predict is that our relationship to digital technologies will become increasingly pervasive (if not invasive), increasingly intimate" (195).
• "Virtual reality devices will also become increasingly affordable and sophisticated." (196)
• "The Internet and related digital communication technologies open up vast possibilities for expanding the amount of information, knowledge and wisdom in the world"(178).

While I challenge all of them, I think I am going to take particular issue with that last bullet-pointed assertion abut wisdom:

I did not feel that there was any evidence in this book that persuaded me that digital technologies expand possibilities for gaining wisdom. I think it is actually the other way around.

Reed might have even been inclined to agree with me at the moment when he wrote, "Information after all, is not knowledge (knowledge is information arranged intelligently) and knowledge is not wisdom (wisdom is knowledge put to good use)" (164).  And "It is important to remember that computers are tools, and tools are only as good as the people who wield them" (166).

My wisdom (what of it I have) makes me question how tools that are as expensive as digital technologies are (both in material resources and in power grid costs), can be at all sustainable.  Personally, I spend $75.00 a month on internet, $63.00 a month on my phone, $100.00 a month on television, and an average of $100.00 a month on electricity (some of this is heat). (And this says nothing about the costs of the machines that are in constant need of upgrade.) As well paid as I am relative to many of my 3rd world counterparts, I can't afford my life.  The first costs to go when and if my pay check gets any tighter will not be my heat; it will be my television and my internet.

How will this be different for any one else in the world?  World economics have never worked out an equitable resource model for all, and the experiments that gave lip service to the attempt to do so (Communism under Lenin and then Stalin), failure miserably.

So if it is true that "70 percent of the world's population (five billion people) have no engagement with digital culture at all"(180), should we worry about making sure all get phones and I-pads at a reduced price so all have better access to 'information," or should we be more concerned that 780 million people don't have access to clean water? (http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/)

"At present," says Reed when talking about the effects of digital technologies on our cognition,"we do not have enough consistent data from neuroscience studies to thoughtfully answer the question, are we becoming more thoughtful?"(171).  I would suggest that until we have that data, that we be especially careful about what basket we put most of our eggs in.

In the scheme of emergency response, the main values are (in this order): water, food, shelter and communication.  Communication is last. 

Digitized Lives are a luxury.  Let's just own it and stop trying to pretend that terminals and circuit boards--no matter how many bytes of data they store --will save the world.  They will share the world, and they will share it with and for those of us who are sated, hydrated and home enough to be wired into those conversations.


 

 This is Ella, my grand daughter, at the Palouse Fair.  The other beautiful creature in the photo (filling up far more senses than any plastic computer terminal could muster) is a Grand Champion Porker (belonging to Ella's cousin).  The knowledge that it took to feed and raise this big fella, and the skill and emotional resolve it will take to butcher him, can save human lives (unless you are a vegetarian--but you get my drift).  There is no text book that needs to spend 9 chapters questioning and analyzing the truth to or the importance of that.

I am not a digital "don't want," (190), but I am a digital skeptic (mostly because I do not see it as economically or environmentally sustainable).  I agree with Thoreau that if we are going to connect ourselves to people and places, we have to value what they have the potential to teach us.  Just being connected is not enough;  connection does not insure effective communication. In fact, after reading most tweets and facebook feeds I rarely feel enlightened.  Most often feel like I have just been on the Jerry Springer Show.

The other issue I want to grab onto, but hopefully will spin out in more detail in other posts (because this one is running a bit long), is the degree to which digital multi-modality, visual rhetorics and the interfaces of online spaces, "may be undermining our ability to think linearly, ... and to grasp complex sustained logical arguments" (170).

I can't answer that, but perhaps it is a shift the world needs us to make.  Perhaps calling back the image will call back a softness that we traded in for the starker and less ambiguous codes of alphabetic literacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QQuD62RxrU

Personally, I love writing.  I love the distance is has the potential to travel; I love the "It" (as compared to "I" or "You"--thank you James Moffett) audience it has the potential to reach.  But, dear Hestia, I could be probably happy with a hearth and a broom and a chicken and a few spells to get me through the day :-).