A History of Media Technology Scares 119
jamesswift writes "Vaughan Bell at Slate has written an interesting article on the centuries old phenomenon of hysterical suspicion surrounding new media and the technologies that enable them. 'A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment. It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565.' The best line comes near then end: 'The writer Douglas Adams observed how technology that existed when we were born seems normal, anything that is developed before we turn 35 is exciting, and whatever comes after that is treated with suspicion.'"
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:3, Insightful)
Mind you, I have done no research in this topic.
Roles (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this just different age groups acting out their normal roles?
The young take the world as they see it and learn from it, adults try to use it productively, and elders warn people about observed and potential dangers.
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:5, Insightful)
He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.
So... If you go to hospital, you might be safer with a stoned surgeon, than one who's been up for 36 hours? Strange, the things we make illegal, and the things we don't.
Suspicion is Healthy, FUD is Not (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, fear due to uncertainty is not healthy and certainly what the TFA seems to allude to. In a way, TFA is just describing how FUD affects how technology advancements are viewed by those over 35 or so.
Reinventing the Wheel (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason, and I still do not understand exactly why, people tend to re-invent things. Once you have seen this happen a few times, you don't tend to be impressed with every latest doo-dad.
As for the reason, there are lots of factors. But the ultimate factor is that nothing is really permanent, certainly not humans but not even ideas. Communication and education have high costs. Information storage degrades, in human memory and in physical forms. Even interpretation of long-stored information is a challenge. There are all sorts of incentives not to share innovation, both inherent and by design of various political and economic systems.
If you're being sold a better video player or a better cheeseburger, it might actually be better for you. But it is almost as likely to be worse. It may not even be better for the person who created it. It may just be newer instead of better. Progress is not a given, and the vast majority of people ("consumers") tend to be uncritical automatons.
Re:Roles (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more like....
Equal parts of wisdom...
The young take the world as they see it and learn from it, adults try to use it productively, and elders warn people about observed and potential dangers.
and ignorance...
The young think they know everything and the older generations are out of touch.
The adults think they know everything. The older generation is out of touch and the younger generation is inexperienced.
The elders think they know everything and the younger generations are inexperienced.
feeble argument (Score:3, Insightful)
What? It doesn't to me, actually. Modern schooling and news media give us many of nifty tools, but also do damage to our education and ability to think independently, and so in turn to society. So, I'm not sure I agree we can dismiss debate like this. I pick this quote because it's an example of why this is a poor argument.
The whole argument the author uses assumes we have consistently progressed using media and surpassed the problems media critics pointed out, therefore critics in the past are wrong. Maybe it's true that they are always rather negative and forget the positive aspects of change, but there have been a huge range of critics with lots of criticisms that seem to have manifested true. Sorry, but you can't throw out an argument like this author did in a 1-page article, he just has too many presumptions for too complex an issue.
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:5, Insightful)
Well considering that IQ really isn't an accurate representation of actual 'general intelligence', this makes perfect sense.
Think of IQ as just another standardised test. You lose 10 points (compared to your own baseline score) by juggling e-mail messages (however they measured that) or missing a night's sleep and lose 4 points from baseline after smoking pot. In any case, these are temporary effects, and a perfect example of why IQ has jack shit to do with how intelligent you actually are.
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:4, Insightful)
So... If you go to hospital, you might be safer with a stoned surgeon, than one who's been up for 36 hours?
Trouble is, you'd probably end up with a surgeon that's stoned and has been up 36 hours. Yeah, it's proven time and time again that lack of sleep seriously impacts your performance, you should never be operated on by someone that's gone 36 hours without sleep unless it's an emergency. But practical matters dictate there won't be operating rooms and doctors everywhere and not enough so in a major accident they just do what they got to do. If it wasn't for that, they should certainly be no less restricted than truck drivers with mandatory rest stops and such. Seriously, would you let someone unfit to drive a road vechicle cut you open with a scalpel? I wouldn't.
Trouble is on the production side (Score:5, Insightful)
There's more trouble on the supply side than on the consumption side.
The problem with news is that the pundit/reporter ratio has swung way too far in the pundit direction. There are too few people out digging up info, and too many people analyzing it. "News is what someone doesn't want published. All else is publicity." With so much incoming free information, willingness to pay people to go out and dig up real news has declined substantially. It takes minutes to rewrite a paragraph from a press release. It takes days of work to get the information for a real story.
Look at the front page of Google News. How many of those stories started as a press release? Most of them. Sometimes, all of them.
In the heyday of newspapers (say, 1880 to 1950), the printing process was far more labor-intensive. As a result, reporters were a small fraction of the payroll, and keeping head count down on the reporting side wasn't top priority. Most newspapers had reporting, editing, composing, and printing all in the same building or adjacent buildings. The big part of the business was printing and distribution.
Today, printing plants are remote, have few people, and may be outsourced. Composing is automated. Editorial is mostly automated; text goes from reporter to printed page without much editing. So reporting is the big labor cost. And it's so easy to just tap into some feed and pump it out to the printing plant.
Blogging isn't helping. It's mostly punditry and self-publicity.
That's where information overload is hurting. Information wants to be free, but free information is self-serving.
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure about that. I've been around stoned people and I've been around really tired people.
Oh really? The rest of your post doesn't give that impression.
Really tired people don't seem to have the same mental differences from their normal state than stoned people.
I'd agree with you if you were using "It's 22:00 and I normally go to bed at exactly 21:30" as an example of "really tired". Now if we're talking about really tired people (like an ER surgeon who's been up for 36+ hours and working hard for most of that time) then we're looking at seriously bizarre behaviour, hallucinations and an inability to concentrate that would make my cats seem like geniuses in comparison.
The average marijuana user just tends to be a bit more relaxed, giggly and goofy and most likely lacking in concentration but at least aware of these shortcomings.
Stoned people seem to lose certain asepcts of their personality.
What parts of their personalities would this be? Because I can't say I've observed this outside of state-sponsored anti-drug propaganda.
IQ? Sure, maybe that doesn't go down. But IQ isn't all you want your doctor to be. You'd also like to have your doctor, say, empathetic to your pain, realize what time it is,...
Most people don't become emotionless zombies when they are under the influence of cannabis (unless we are talking about the aforementioned state-sponsored propaganda). If anything most people become more emotional after smoking marijuana (but will seem "emotionless" when asked to take out the trash or clean the dishes, sort of like how someone who is drunk will laugh similar things off while under the influence).
As for perception of time, cannabis does impair your ability to keep track of time but unless we're talking about a doctor who's so stoned he/she can't stand up then this really isn't that much of an issue. It's a much bigger issue when you have nothing important to do and you forget to go out and buy more soda before the grocery store closes because you're "busy" watching a movie.
etc. Really tired people don't seem to have quite the same brain "skew" that someone who is stoned does.
Obviously the effect isn't the same, but I'd rather be in the hands of a doctor who's had a few hits of a joint an hour ago than a doctor who's been up since yesterday morning.
/Mikael
Not buying it (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, people can tell movies and television from real life, but repeated exposure really seems to have an effect. (Example: people think violent crime, and murder in particular, is much more common than in all but the poorest and least {cared-about-by-the-powerful} areas; why? ---because they've seen it, night after night, year after year, and the skill to avoid being influenced by this false evidence was not needed in the Serengeti.) It is certainly possible to over-influence people with words alone, but I can't shake the feeling that the reptile brain is privileged by The Image.
On the other hand, maybe people will be less influence by television and radio once they've gained the experience of making their own.
Mass media FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Old media wants to protect its market. An easy way to do this is to discourage old media consumers from trying out new media. "Online scammers - we'll show you how to avoid them! Tonight after weather and sports." is a common teaser these days only because it helps re-enforce that the Internet is a wild, dangerous place (except for the TV station's web site, of course). Better just keep the TV on and relax, they can't get you here.
Re:Enjoyed the Marijuana Story (Score:3, Insightful)
If you take an IQ test five minutes after smoking a joint, you will score ten points lower. However, the next day your score will be what it was before you smoked the joint. In short, DUH!
I imagine if I took an IQ test drunk I'd score quite a bit lower than ten points down.
They've found that twisting the truth is more believable than a bald-faced lie, even though the anit-pot warriers do tell some whoppers.
As to email, if you take an IQ test with something important on your mind (like the hot chick sitting next to you, or an important email) you'll score lower as well. Anything that hurts your concentration will hurt your IQ score.