f4f3 | "Simpsons did it."

Just hepped by this article
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1759802,00.html
to
this speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/60420-18.htm#60420-18_spopq0

I really must get better at inserting links.

As the journalist says, not the sort of speech we see in the commons too often.

Reading both, I was struck by the degree to which ideas that used to be the preserve of writers like Phillip K Dick, and later of cyberpunks like Bruce Sterling are becoming part of everyday life. In 20 years a gap has opened between us "of the Twentieth Century" (a chilling phrase, too) and our children in terms of how we learn the world (apologies to Ken McCleod), and I can't imagine how wide that gulf will be by the time our grandchildren make it on the scene.

At school we used to talk about the possibility of comprehensible allusion (well, when we weren't trying to hit each other with paperclips, and how this was one of the main glues for culture. In those days the allusions we referred to were books, history, the classics - these seem to have been replaced with allusions to tv programs, net events (events which, to misquote Alan Moore, are so small and happen so quickly they can scarcely be said to have happened at all), memes... I'm not going to say that these are any less valuable than those of a previous generation, but they are all distinguished by their brevity - an allusion made today might be dated by next week, or tomorrow, or in an hour. I'm not saying a society can't be built on these connectives, but it will seem a very strange place to us.

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It's better constructed and expressed than most but I think it's still pretty much a "young people today" Pythonesque rant. Most people, throughout human history, have constructed reality from a whole raft of sources of which "carefully constructed" books are but one. I can remember when our reading skills were all going to go to hell because kids' comics stopped having long prose stories in them and worried parents would only let their children read the "Children's Encyclopedia" or whatever it was called, rather than having their brains rotted by "Victor" or "Beano". I expect the Romans had similar problems.

On first reading this was my view today, and I even started a "grumpy old man" post about it.

On second thoughts, I'm inclined to agree with it. Your example of comics as being a previous example of brain rotters is particularly to the point: anyone who reads The Beano (the Victor having fallen by the wayside, unfortunately) has 80 or 100 years of Beano history to refer to, and will be understood by anyone who read it as a youth: Beryl the Peril may have gone, but she has a linear descendant in Sid the Sexist (sorry, different comic). Anyone who reads the X-Men has a sub-creative mythology which runs to millions of pages, all capable of being referred to and understood. I'm constantly surprised by how many people know who Cal Rankin was, or Cain Marko (yes, I run in very geeky circles).
The transitory nature of the Net, of text messages and e-mails, makes it dificult to build complex, enduring structures being built from them. The exceptions that come to mind are mostly based around classical models - Wikipedia - or are community based - games players, or livejournal/myspace.
I've a feeling the change is more qualitative than quantatative this time - I'm not saying the world will come to an end, but I do think there's a real chance that we're on the edge of the end of the world as we know it.

The world is changing at an increasing pace of course but we've survived radio, television, transcontinental flights and all manner of other seriously disorienting devices. Is the text message more subversive than the telegram?

No - but anyone trying to learn how to write, or to read, from text messages would arrive at an impaired way of communicating or receiving either abstract ideas or technical knowledge.

Thanks for the link.

This is an area I work in, and I am trying to compose a rational response - I might just make it a post on my journal when I'm done!

I'll be glad to read it. It's an area I was once active in - when I was in Motorola I worked in instructional design, and flirted with organisational design and HR for a while. It has to go under one of the paths not chosen, but it was fascinating work.

more like vomiting on the page, than a considered response (ooh, sorry).

I really don't agree with Susan Greenfield, because I don't think things are anywhere near as fragmented as she seems to suggest; also this response to the chaos of modern life goes back centuries, as far as I can see.

Also, I can text and keep a blog and go on AIM, so it's not like it's some sort of odd impossibility for the more mature among us...very few of my RL friends do but that's more to do with frivolity/lack of need than the technology..

Also also, some internet culture is fundamentally much more creative than what went before...

The notion that lack of shared reference is a problem is interesting, in that entertainment is becoming more and more atomised and individualised (your movie, my music, her book).

More fundamentally I find it odd to realise that because I'm now an agnostic adult, my kids do not get the steeping in Christian culture that I got and that is really pretty helpful for understanding lots of things in life; on the other hand, they'll never have to pretend to pray in school. But it's certainly a cultural loss, whatever your beliefs.

Since I'm equally disorganised, I'll grab the last point first. I too lack the iron faith necessary to be an atheist, but I found that my son got a far better grounding in comparitive religion than I did (a Catholic school upbringing will do that to you) and was in a position at middle school to make informed decisions about religion that I didn't reach until my late teens.

I don't think the problem is in adults being unable to participate in the new technology - I've just had an email from a friend complaining of the withdrawal pains from the internet, but commenting that at least his phone can pick up emails - but that the new tools are not as conducive to communicating complicated reasoning, and that as a result we may jettison that mode of thought. As far as I'm concerned, rationalism underpins the modern world - if we stop understanding genetics or electronics or politics, then things like evolution, computers and government become indistinguishable from magic again, and instead of being in control of our destinies we'll start worshipping the shadowy dieties that control these mysterious forces.

David Hume, you should be alive at this hour.

"Simpsons did it."

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