[A-List] Digital Nation?

Fri Jun 11 17:24:46 MDT 2010

No Thanks!

by Peter Crabb

Culture Change (June 08 2010)

One of the brilliant insights in Daniel Quinn's 1992 novel Ishmael is that
modern industrialized people do not know how to live. Humans have long
been cut off from the contingencies of nature, first as a consequence of
discovering the wholly unnatural skill of growing reliable food supplies
in one place, and later as a side effect of learning how to manufacture
wholly unnatural objects and environments. The resulting alienation from
nature and from our ancestors' nature-adapted ways of life left us
clueless and susceptible to being sold ideas about how people should live,
usually by the most audacious psychopath in the group. Systems of do's and
don'ts and fear-inspiring superstition kept the overworked and underfed
serfs and slaves distracted with mythology, rituals, "moral" prohibitions,
and unrestrained baby production. Except for the rare Spartacus, the serfs
and slaves didn't have the time or energy to give any trouble to the soft,
overfed elites living in white palaces. They simply went along with the
program.

Some things just don't change.

Today the industrial capitalist elite is hard-selling a mythology-based
way of life that undermines human potential and the capacity for
sustainable communities. As part of the pitch, PBS (the P variously
standing for Petroleum, Pharmaceutical, Pentagon, Propaganda, or Phone,
take your pick) aired the Frontline program "Digital Nation" in February,
2010, a ninety-minute infomercial selling tv-viewing serfs the notion that
junk technologies are good for them.

At the outset, the producers give their game away with the announcement
that "Major funding is provided by Verizon Foundation". Indeed, the look
of the just-released DVD is quintessentially Verizon: images of attractive
young people gazing happily into cell phones. In real life, of course,
most cell phone users are visibly bored or frustrated or downright angry
as they desperately clutch their gadgets. But this video is not about
reality. It's an outline for a business plan that uses Madison
Avenue-style myth-making to seduce the audience.

The tone of the video is set in the opening sequence, when
writer-producer-director-correspondent Rachel Dretzin sits down at a
blurry web cam, looks the viewer in the eye, and begins with the
ubiquitous pseudo-hip condescension, "So ... " This opener should
immediately alert viewers that they are about to be explained to by
savvier-than-thou technology cultists about the emerging electronic
information and communication technologies (ICTs) and how they are shaping
society.

It is not surprising, then, that in what follows there is lots of happy
talk about corporate technology products. Co-writer-correspondent Douglas
Rushkoff has long been a cyber-enthusiast and mythologizer of technology.
He says that "Virtual worlds do offer humans the chance to do something
altogether new", by which I don't think he means sitting around getting
fat and developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Philip Rosedale, CEO of the
virtual world Second Life, crows, "We're alienated from each other and the
world around us. When people come together in a virtual world, we
immediately become more social, more connected, and more dependent on each
other." Real world bad, unsustainable fake world good. And one teenage
technology cultist couldn't have put it more mythically if she were paid:
"We should embrace the technology that we have, and we should be thankful
for it".

In typical USAn media Newspeak fashion, Digital Nation pretends to look at
"both sides" of technology issues, as though there are always only two
sides. This is a well-established technique used by advertisers who know
they can persuade people to buy their products if they present a view that
opposes their own. It makes them look fair-minded and thus more credible.
Despite a few remarks about the pitfalls of technology dependency, the
take-home message of the video is that technology is inevitable, it is a
force of nature, don't ask questions, and lie back and enjoy it. Oh, and,
it's all about YOU!

At MIT, an institution not known for circumspection about technology,
psychologist Sherry Turkle nonetheless makes the sensible observation that
college students "have done themselves a disservice by drinking the
Kool-Aid and believing that a multitasking learning environment will serve
their best purposes". Stanford sociologist Clifford Nass elaborates by
reporting laboratory evidence that the idea of multitasking is sheer myth.
He finds that college students who think they are really good at
multitasking - texting, watching American Idol, listening to an MP3
player, emailing, surfing the web, munching Cheetos, and writing a paper
on the gender instantiations of Miley Cyrus all at the same time - are in
fact really bad at all of those things. The brain can only do one thing
well at a time. In typical Verizon advert style, an attractive young MIT
coed dismisses concerns about multitasking by coolly announcing, "We are
completely capable". Who do we believe, the nerdy scientists or the
beautiful young people?

Katie Salen, a professional educational technology booster, promotes the
use of computer games in schools. "Games give us an incredibly engaging
learning experience ... What it comes down to is that if you can't engage
that kid in wanting to learn something, you really have a problem on your
hands". So be sure our taxpayer-funded schools buy lots of corporate
technotoys to keep the kids distracted with texting and twittering and
facebook-befriending, trendily called "student-centered education". In one
of the rare moments of enlightened dissent, journalist Todd Oppenheimer
counters that this is "complete hogwash ... Schools are one of the few
institutions we have in our society where you can have a sustained
conversation about something without being bombarded and distracted by all
these machines. We have to protect that." He is right about the potential
of education, but we've already failed miserably to protect kids and
schools from the creeping technology menace.

The dialogue about multitasking and distraction is part of a larger battle
over consciousness, and the corporate sellers of junk technology are
winning that battle as they colonize the minds of younger generations.
Those of us who envision a new reality that is free of corporate
parasitism would do well to take note of this development. It isn't just
tv and the internet. It's a whole consumption constellation of
corporate-produced distractions that have totally captured the attention
and energies of young people. The digital ghetto they live in isolates
them from older generations and cultivates contempt for any reality other
than the one they have been sold. Why visit with neighbors or learn to
garden when texting is so much more fun and easy?

The video lamely pretends to address the problems of technology's impact
on physical and mental health. In one segment Douglas Rushkoff travels to
South Korea to investigate internet and video game addiction among young
people. The Koreans have treatment programs where kids give up their
gadgets for several weeks of reeducation, low-tech activities, and diet
and exercise. Exoticizing technology-induced behavioral problems by
reporting from South Korea subtly implies that USAns don't have the same
technology addiction problems. But the critical viewer will see plenty of
images of pudgy, addle-brained USAns glued to screens, the real story.

No reference at all is made to the multiple hazards of electromagnetic
fields (EMFs). We just see joyous innocent girls and boys clutching
electronic devices close to their bodies. It's not surprising that a
Verizon-funded program would avoid broaching the topic when the current
industry plan appears to be all wi-fi in all places at all times. Nor are
there any references to the environmental harms of these technologies.
Nothing about the alleged fact that one Google search uses enough
electricity to boil a cup of water. Nothing about the disastrous effects
of mining rare earth metals to manufacture these gadgets. And nothing
about the plague of plastics these technologies are made from. As far as
this program is concerned, there really are no costs to the promised
digital world.

We are told that technology is also changing business. Visiting IBM's
world headquarters, we learn that the computer company has largely adopted
a telecommuting model, where workers stay home several days a week and
meet and work online, leaving the physical buildings empty much of the
time. The implication is that this is the way of the future for business.
But the promise of telecommuting that was hyped in the 1990s hasn't
materialized for most workers, whose days still include time trapped in
bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way to brick-and-mortar workplaces.
Instead of the liberation promised by telecommuting, ICTs have brought us
something quite different and unwelcome: the erosion of the boundaries
between work and home and between the corporation and the self. When email
first became a routine part of university business, I was outraged when I
returned home at the end of a long day of teaching to find more orders
from bosses waiting in my email inbox. There was no escape. And things got
worse from there as many workers were issued pagers and then cell phones
and then PDAs. The 24/7 work world invaded the serenity of home, disrupted
family ties, and obliterated personal space. But you won't hear anything
about that on this video.

There are two tell-tale segments about technology and the military. We can
guess that these were included because the program's sponsor, Verizon,
must profit handsomely from militarism. Surely every one of the quarter of
a million US service personnel at over 700 military bases around the world
must carry a cell phone and subscribe to cell service. That's a bloody big
market.

In one of those segments, we visit the US Army Experience Center near
Philadelphia, where teenagers as young as thirteen are lured to play with
sexy weapons, helicopter and Humvee simulators, and first-person shooter
games to get a feel for the adrenaline rush of combat. Recruiters joke
with the kids who shout "Die!"and "Kill them!" as they play. "A 21st
century approach to recruiting, modeled on the Apple Store", reports our
correspondent, Rachel Dretzin. Weekly protests outside the Army Experience
Center focus on the intentional blurring of the line between reality and
combat video games. One Army recruiter assures us, "Certainly video games
are not like warfare. I think most kids are smart enough to understand
that." A teenage visitor to the Center concurs: "I don't get confused.
It's all fictional. I mean, it's fun, but it's nothing like the real
thing." Anyone who saw the WikiLeaks video released in April, 2010 (link
below) that shows a helicopter gunship pilot's view of mowing down Iraqi
civilians as though he were playing a video game might come to a different
conclusion.

Katie Salen says the distinction between the real world and the virtual
world is a peculiarly adult perspective, "an idea that's come from a
generation where 'virtual' didn't exist ... but kids have the ability to
kind of move seamlessly between the digital and the real". Rachel Dretzin
echoes that sentiment: "Maybe there's something these kids are getting
that we [adults] aren't sure how to value yet". Kids are the experts,
adults are out of it and just plain stupid. Never mind that the people who
make and market these technologies are very crafty adults who know exactly
what they are doing as they lure young people into all-consuming
technology dependence.

Summing up the video's me-centered consumerist ideology, correspondent
Douglas Rushkoff muses, "But when you stand back and look awhile, it
becomes clear that people will take almost any technology and use it to
express themselves, to find other people, to remake the world on their own
terms ... I love the possibilities of a digital life".

When I stand back and look, it becomes clear that the corporate powers are
forcing junk technologies on us that are destroying our health, our
communities, and the planet. We are being reduced to cyber-serfs. I for
one will stick with the possibilities of real life.

_____

Peter Crabb recently spearheaded a new policy at the college where he
teaches: cell phone use in the classroom are banned. He is a social
psychologist who lives among the flora, fauna, and fungi of rural eastern
Pennsylvania. For now, at least, he can be contacted at pbcrabb at verizon
dot net.

Sources

PBS digital nation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=top5&utm_source=top5

collateralmurder.com
http://www.collateralmurder.com/