The Robotic Technophobic Sloth

The Robotic Technophobic Sloth is us. It is you. It is me. It is our culture. Now let me explain.
The title typifies portions of our culture and certain cultural attitudes towards new media. Our society is becoming increasingly dependent upon technology. Similarly to what Marshall McLuhan stated about media being an extension of our selves and part of our bodies, a large part of our cultural identities and our humanity is contained within computers. In fact, I would go as far as to make the analogy that if there were to be a major computer attack within our country (we'll call it "cancer") against the infrastructure that governs our communication systems (we'll call that "the lungs") there would significant maybe even devestating disruption to our lives. We have become, in a sense, robotic, or at the very least cyborgs.

But where all this stems from, as well as the idea of us being technophobe's, is from Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital. The book is full of "predictions" about the future of media that, now, 12 years later, we are seeing many coming true. Because of the accuracy of his insight, we must take a look at some of the "predictions" that either did not or are slow to pass. Take for instance what he has to say about education. On page 220 he writes that classrooms and teaching in general are one area that have remained relativly untouched by the advancement of digital technology and that "84 percent of America's teachers consider only one type of information technology absolutely 'essential': a photo copier with an adequate paper supply." Now I understand that there are many different factors that determine why the arena of education has not "kept with the times" and an area such as the medical field has. But it is subtly indicitive of where the mentality towards new media and technology lies. Given that technology is an extension of ourselves and one must use to learn that technology at some point in their life, it could certainly be understood why certain members of our society are afraid of or at the very least resistent to new technology.

Technological advancement is coming whether people want it to or not. Due to cultural resistence to the "next next thing" in technology it is proceding at a pace no faster than that of a sloth. This pattern is cyclical: technology is released, people adjust and adapt and endure the growing pains. Just as soon as they begin reaching their stride with the new technology, something else new is released and the whole process begins again. I do not know whether Steve Jobs made the chicken or Bill Gates laid the egg, but technology developers weigh heavily the proper time and distribution of what they create so as not to have our bodies (society) reject what is being put into it.

Then again maybe this all just circumspection and I'm just getting to be an old robotic technophobic sloth.

Cubism - McLuhan - Grammer of Print

There are several strong and several perplexing points that McLuhan makes in the Medium is the Message. I have chosen to try to clarify the points he made with the art form of cubism and "the grammer of print."

Cubism, as defined by McLuhan himself is,
"In other words, cubism, by giving the inside and outside, top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole."
McLuhan goes on to specify that it as the point at which "sequence yields to simultaneous," the point that the individual parts 'speak' less loudly than the entirety, the the medium has indeed become the message. The individual parts are not distinctive compared to the whole they make up; "Specialized segments of attention have shifted to the total field. "

Similarly, and perhaps slightly easier to grasp is the "grammer of print" statement McLuhan makes. To understand grammer is to understand the communicative machanics involved with a given system. McLuhan precedes the "grammer of print" with Napoleon's understanding of the "grammer of gunpowder." To understand the 'grammer' of these two worlds is, like a cubist, to view the content of the field as a part of the whole, virtually ignoring the specific parts while focusing on the message of the whole. Napoleon understood the language of war and that it did not necessarily matter what or at whom a weapon was being fired but saw the broader implications of what that shot ment. De Tocqueville understood the grammer of print so well that "he was thus able to tread off the message of coming change in France and America as if be were reading aloud from a text that had been handed to him." He knew that what was being printed did not matter as much as print was saturated throughout the culture.

Welcome to my blog

Jacob has a dog.
He is a 3 year old Beagle.
His name is Barkley.
Barkley has two owners.
Jacob and his wife Alison.
Jacob turns 30 this year.
Jacob married up by marrying younger.