Etale – Life in the Digital World

There are still quite a few people who have an outdated view of how the Internet is impacting society. It just isn’t as black and white as some suggest. While some studies are indicating that Internet use is deteriorating family time and other face-to-face social interactions, that isn’t the full story. The other side of that story is that people are using mobile technologies to be more active in trying effect positive change in the physical world, in connecting with others in meaningful ways. Toward that end, Linton Weeks wrote an excellent article at npr.org on The Extraordinaries: Will Microvolunteering Work? Weeks writes, “Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.”

This article highlights the side of mobile technologies and the digital culture that is actually grounding us even more in the physical world around us, not to mention the physical world half a planet away. The fact is that many of us have, in the words of John Muir (although I’m admittedly re-purposing the quote) lived “on the world but not in the world” for quite some time. The full quote is, ““Most people are on the world, not in it – having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them – undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate”” Even when we are AWK, wandering the physical sidewalks, we often walk right past the hurting and the problems all around us. While I’m the last person to propose that mobile technologies or any other invention will improve what I consider to be a fundamentally flawed human nature, it is fascinating to see how some are making use of these mobile devices to get back into the world, reach out, help out, speak up, get up, chip in, and live in their local communities…even if it is just via a text message or a quick cell phone photo sent to public works in order to fix a pothole. Or, thanks to services like kiva.org, donorschoose, and globalgiving; we get a very different picture of what is taking place when we see that person sitting on the subway typing on a two inch keypad, seemingly oblivious to the people around. Who knows, that person might be the in the middle of giving a no interest loan to a needy and aspiring low income entrepreneur on the other side of the world.

Thanks to Linton Weeks for reporting on a wonderful and fascinating side to this new digital world.

Which of the following best describes your view of the Internet?

1) It is basically a good thing.
2) It is basically a bad thing.
3) It is neutral…neither good nor bad.
4) It all depends upon how you use it.

OR

5) It is, in the words of Neil Postman, a Faustian bargain…a mixed bag, and it is often hard to determine whether it is good or bad until after the fact.

If you read this blog long enough, you’ll find that I’m a #5. And I’ll be honest that I read #5 into pretty much everything. I’m skeptical of complaints that the digital world is making us the dumbest generation ever, and I’m equally skeptical that it is the solution to all of our problems. It is a mixed bag. To illustrate the point, allow me to direct our attention to a report published this week by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, Family Time Decreases with Internet Use. Here is a quote from the first line of the article:

“More and more of America’s Internet-connected households report erosion of face-to-face family time, increased feelings of being ignored by family members using the Web, and growing concerns that children are spending too much time online.”

I’m pretty sure that this was not the intended outcome for most families and Internet users. I doubt that the typical husband or wife sat down at the computer one day and declared, “I would like to spend less time with my family and more time browsing the web for random information.” Yet, that is what took places in some of our homes. I’m sure that you’ve heard the story of a researcher who explained how to boil a live frog. From the great digital author Wi Ki Pedia,

“The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to important changes that occur gradually.”

It doesn’t really work, but it is a nice story that helps us to think about a phenomenon that is real. It is called “creeping normalcy.” It is the idea that a group or individual learns to tolerate or even embrace something if it is introduced gradually. If one had tried to introduce the same thing right up front, it would have been rejected. Is this part of what has taken place in some of our families? Imagine a modern day household that has been changed by increased Internet use. The husband is sitting in the living room, scanning the last few hours of tweets. The wife is in the next room doing some late night work online. One kid is on yet another computer, touching base with friends on Facebook. The other kid is playing a video game with a dozen people around the world. Keep the camera rolling for a few hours, days, weeks, and we see a similar evening cycle. Is that really something that most families would have embraced overnight?

So, is the Internet 1) good, 2) bad, 3) neutral, 4) all depends upon how you use it, or 5) a mixed bag? The most common answer that I get to this question is #4. However, doesn’t #4 assume that we first recognize the good and bad and then make a careful conscious choice about how to use it? Is it really that simple to recognize the good and bad? Is that really how family time decreases with Internet usage?