Sunday, May 15, 2005

Hung-over and Thinking



For the most part, New York City’s subways are subterranean, but some lines in the outer boroughs are elevated. The Queensbound N/W subway line emerges from under the East River and rises over the rooftops before turning north up 31st Street to Astoria, where I live.

Yesterday, as white sunlight made unnecessary the green fluorescent glow of the subway car lighting, I looked up from my magazine and noticed a young Colombian boy playing with his father’s cell phone. Standing by a window, the boy had selected the phone’s camera mode and was captivated by the cityscape, pixilated and bleached, as it cruised by on the phone's small viewfinder.

'There is something here,' I thought. Is this a nice metaphor for our First World disconnect, I wondered? Does a preference for a digitized interpretation of the world suggest a break with the unmediated rest of it? Is the child really exhibiting such a preference or is this cigar just a cigar? For that matter, is the “real” world anything more than a neurological interpretation itself, our own personal computer translating strings of chemical 1s and 0s?

Suddenly, I found myself recalling something Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, wrote in 1945.
“It seems to me that something new is in formation on our planet. The material progress of modern times has indeed linked mankind by a sort of nervous system. The contacts are innumerable. The communications are instantaneous. We are materially bound like the cells of the same body. But this body does not yet have a soul. This organism has not yet grown conscious of itself. The hand does not feel itself a part with the eye.”
His observation still rings true today, at least to psuedo-luddites like myself.

Hung over and splintered, my mind made a seemingly disparate connection between the Exupery quote and a poem I wrote five or six years ago.
Sunset is chilly
on the shores of Southampton,
the water creeping closer
to the foundations of second or third homes.
Hiding in a tangled mass
of beached seagrass,
the tiny coffins of unborn skates
catch our attention.
Tearing open one of the leathery wombs,
a yolk falls into my palm.
Still attached, still feeding,
is a squirming embryo.

Next morning now,
The clouds heavy with rain
sag and burst like
too full mammaries.
The rain chases my train
to New York City.
The father reached over and pried the phone out of the boy’s hands. The boy looked up in protest before turning his attention to his shoes.

Photo credit: 1995-2001, Chao-Hwa Che

2 comments:

Hungry Hyaena said...

Devo:

I hope this new "network" can develop a "soul" - and I believe language and generalism would be critical - but I remain skeptical. Of course, I'm usually a glass half empty kinda guy (when considering the not-so-distant future), but this is one arena where I think my apparent pessimism isn't so much pessimism as optimism about the alternatives.

The push for sustainable living in New England and parts of the northern mid-west, a move toward economies of scale and localized community participation, seems quite hopeful to me...a kind of progressive regression. I think our technological renaissance could be employed to great benefit, primarily as a means of keeping in touch and sharing information, in such communities. Importantly, our approach to technology would have to transition from new-better-faster to steady improvements and recycling. Computers would have to be utilized for ten or more years rather than replaced every three or four.

I have no problem with technology, but I do have a problem with the marketing of electronics and our own attitudes regarding the products.

Les:

I feel bad. You don't really have to register to post a comment. Sorry about that.

Part of me feels you are right. All children will find curious, new ways of seeing what is familiar. This boy was merely using the tools at his disposal. Hell, recent studies (see Steven Johnson's new book, Everything Bad Is Good For You) show that IQ continues to increase as children become more comfortable with video games and television programs become more complex - yes, even "Friends." On the other hand, even if staring out the car window at the passing fields doesn't make you "smarter," I'm not sure having kids plug into the Disney DVD du jour, IQ increases aside, is something I would prefer.

Hungry Hyaena said...

Devo:

While I have bemoaned the intelligence of shows like "Friends" for so many years that certain friends of mine view me as a pretentious boob, some of the arguments made by Steven Johnson are sound.

Johnson compares the linear plotlines of hit television programs from the 1970s and early 1980s ("Starsky and Hutch," "Dallas") with their contemporary equivalents ("Seinfeld," "Friends," "The O.C.," and even "Survivor.") As Malcolm Gladwell puts it in his recent review of Johnson's new book, "To watch an episode of 'Dallas' today is to be stunned by its glacial pace - by the arduous attempts to establish social relationships, by the excruciating simplicity of the plotline, by how obvious it was."

The level of interaction, or "filling in," on the part of viewer has increased as well. Think of "The Simpsons" and the many allusions to other cultural references. Usually, these allusions are exactly that, allusions, and we viewers are expected to make the more explicit connections on our own. Shows like "Friends" do this, too, only their allusions are less intelligent and targeted to the lowest common denominator.

Of course, as both you and Les point out, how can these shows be both so damaging and "good for you." Well, what Johnson ignores is pretty substantial, too. Again, I turn to Gladwell:

"Being 'smart' involves facility in both kinds of thinking - the kind of fluid problem solving that matters in things like video games and IQ tests, but also the kind of crystallized knowledge that comes from explicit learning. If Johnson's book has a flaw, it is that he sometimes speaks of our culture being 'smarter' when he's really referring just to that fluid problem-solving facility. When it comes to that other kind of intelligence, it is not clear at all what kind of progress we are making, as anyone who has read, say, the Gettysburg Address alongside any Presidential speech from the past twenty years can attest. The real question is what the right balance of these two forms of intelligence might look like.

As for those people who hail "Survivor" as programming genius, I have to assume they have never actually read Machiavelli or Dante and that they have little to entertain them when they aren't at their 9-to-5. Reality TV bores the be-jesus out of me, a result of its complete predictability...seems almost odd that reality TV should have become the most formulaic, but people will act as they feel they are supposed to and having grown up on a steady diet of television, most of them are merely regurgitating tried-and-true plotlines from their youth.

As for the evils of "Sesame Street"...I'm certainly not as extreme as you are, Devo. I hear you, but I wouldn't blame the show for encouraging everyone to "follow their bliss." Sure, some will still end up working in a sewer, but everyone should try to "be what they want to be."