Gandhi led hundreds of thousands of Indians to protest the British Salt Act. One morning he supposedly woke up and went to meditate before he met with the elders to discuss matters. He proceeded to insist that everyone turn around and go home, which created quite an uproar among his inner senior circle. But he calmly looked at them all and stated "I strive for the truth, not consistency." Well, I'm not Gandhi, but I did make a mistake when I wrote in a previous blog (Do Social Websites Hurt Kids: Give me a Break!) that the intense stimulation bombarding the youth of today is benign.
We already know that multitasking results in degraded performance because it relies on rapidly shifting from one topic to another (as opposed to being able to effectively parallel process). But the problems of a world (or at least a country like the USA) having been trained to operate as ADD sufferers are just beginning to be apparent.
Let's start with the media and the entertainment business more globally. Are network TV, newspapers, books, and magazines on the way out? It definitely appears to be the case and nobody has the desire, let alone attention span, to read or watch much. All media is becoming internet based and/or illegally downloaded. If you examine the content of the hot sites, blogs and shows, they are all in the breakneck speed position. This is not a cycle, but a trend and we haven't a clue where it will ultimately go.
Talk to teens about relationships, especially boys, and see the ripple effect. I remember dating and sex being a numero uno priority in those days (and now), but the prospect of actually talking to the girl after the proverbial hook-up gives young people panic attacks. Try presenting the following scenario to a college boy these days: you've just met a sexy, brilliant, funny, sweet logical girl -- my response is why not hang out with her a bit and enjoy all of her?
It took a while before I understood the green pallor of the young men's skins and their complete disinterest in intimacy. They knew on some level that a "relationship" would require frustration tolerance -- a commodity that doesn't exist in attention-compromised souls. So if nobody can accept -- let alone tolerate- others long enough to get married and have kids, are we doomed to extinction (I am only partially jesting).
I remember in college reading about the Whorfian Hypothesis, namely that society and language influence each other reciprocally. This would suggest that the changing world we live in will ultimately affect how we communicate to each other and visa versa. Remember Marshall McLuhan, who prophetically spoke of "the media [as] the message." To quote Buffalo Springfield, "something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear."
In the same way that TV replaced radio, we are clearly in need of a new paradigm. Watch an old French film and you'll be amazed how slow and boring it now feels. How we develop stimulating interactive TV, among other things, is anyone's guess, but with our jobless recovery who really knows anything.
Srinivasan Pillay: Sex And The Illusion Of Physical Form
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