Defending the Self

Returning to school after a twelve year hiatus has been nothing short of incredible. I feel sometimes as if I have jumped through a time warp, setting down my pen and paper at one end, and picking up my laptop at the other. As I look around the classroom at my peers, I am stunned by their technological abilities. The seamless way in which they toggle between screens, chatting online with their friends while still managing to take notes from the lecture that is unfolding before us. The one time that I personally attempted this feat, I was so distracted by trying to do everything that I’m pretty sure I actually accomplished nothing. It’s true, I am in awe of the multitasking abilities of this generation, but it also makes me wonder: am I missing something here? Or are they?

The possibilities of this digital age are endless, and the speed of progression is exponential. No other single technological advancement has propelled us forward as quickly as the personal computer. Though Marshall McLuhan did not live to see the day that his students used laptops instead of pencils, his reference to the “electronic age of instantaneous communication,” (1995, p. 237) was eerily prophetic. Of this he says, “...unlike previous environmental changes, the electronic media constitute a total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes” (p. 237). If digital advancements have the power to transform a society instantaneously, it raises the question: Are we, the people in that society, mentally prepared for it? With such a sudden emphasis on the external stimuli of the digital age, we are at risk of allowing the internal complexities of introspective awareness die out completely, but only if we let it. Succumbing to the superficial distractions that surround us at every moment is a personal choice of our own free will and is not inevitable.

In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts (1994) suggests that we are entering into a period of “social collectivization that will over time all but vanquish the ideal of the isolated individual” (p. 130). This is both completely true and utterly false, depending on how it is read. On the one hand, of course we are collectivizing. What is the World Wide Web if not a collection of ideas and information from many different sources and added by many different people. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia built entirely by its users, is a testament to this collaborative process. But this does not mean that we are all thinking with the same brain. Yes, we may have a similar pool of information to draw from on television or the internet, but is exactly the “isolated individual” who interprets that information, and every interpretation will be different, based on the experiences of that individual and the context in which it is taken. Unless we all share the same upbringing, emotions, memories, and life lessons, we will all continue to approach things from a unique vantage point—a vantage point occupied solely by an individual person.

It would be impossible to engage in this dialogue of technological supremacy versus individual free will without mentioning the massive popularity of social networking websites like facebook and MySpace. On these sites, we are able to build up a digital vignette of ourselves—complete with photos, interests, and hobbies. My facebook profile is a two-dimensional, electronic extension of my three-dimensional self, and makes me immediately accessible to anyone who goes looking for me. In fact, anyone who looks at my profile may even get the impression that they know me, the intrinsic me, the me that can answer questions and participate in a discussion. But it is not me. As Socrates described the limitations of paintings and the written word in his dialogue with Phaedrus, so too are the limits of a web page:
"The productions of painting look like living beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn silence. The same holds true of written words; you might suppose that they understand what they are saying, but if you ask them what they mean by anything they simply return the same answer over and over again." (Plato, n.d., trans. Hamilton, 1973, p. 97).

The constraints that the computer operates under are even further limited by the very nature of what comprises the language of computer data—the binary. This is what McLuhan refers to as the “two-bit wit” (Marchand, 1989, p. 253). A computer is designed to answer either “yes or no.” Even at its most advanced level of communication, it lacks the ability to see something as “yes and no,” a concept which the human brain has little or no trouble with at all (Marchand, 1989, p. 253). So where is the self in all of this? The self is sitting at the computer, manipulating the page, choosing what information to share, and what picture to post. The third-dimension that has been missing from this equation is still in control and has been all along. The private self has chosen to display a public version, and can at any time chose to retract it—there has been no loss of intrinsic awareness.

A common misconception when thinking about the on-line matrix of the World Wide Web is that we are all anonymous out there in cyber-space. It would seem so much easier to post a nasty comment in a chat room, create a racist blog, or even stalk an unsuspecting victim when we feel that our identity is hidden. Most notably, pedophiles have used this cloak of anonymity to lure children out of the virtual realm and into the real world, sometimes by posing as children themselves. It is true that we can create an on-line persona to reflect ourselves in any light that we wish, but we can only hide to a certain extent. Our ability to take cover in cyber-space is limited by the unique fingerprint that our personal computers leave on everything they touch. It is called an IP address, and it is specific to only one computer in the world and is therefore specific to that one person who is guiding its actions—the registered user. By itself, the PC is an innately inanimate object, completely dependent on the key strokes of the human who directs it. Once the computer has been personalized to a specific user by the addition of passwords and IP address, it has become as unique as the individual who is operating it.

Now, getting back to my problem with multi-tasking in the classroom, I’d like to point out that the day that I brought my laptop was the day that I learned the least. I was engaging myself outwardly on so many levels that I was completely neglecting what was happening on the inside. In these moments of over-stimulation, my consciousness existed totally outside of myself and at the expense of my internal awareness. I completely lacked the mental capacity to internalize, digest, and comprehend the lecture that was being spoken. The words could enter my ears and exit my fingers onto the keyboard, but something was getting lost in the translation. It was here that I fully understood what Socrates meant in his instructions on the difference between recollection and memory. The notes that I was taking while distracted were merely “receipts for recollection” (Plato, n.d., trans. Hamilton, 1973, p. 96). That is, I had not yet learned the true knowledge of the thing in order to have a memory of it. All I had were words on a page that I would one day read in hopes of learning the truth of what was spoken in that lecture. It seems to me that this is a rather long way around, and if I had been truly engaged in the discourse at that time, I would have cut out the middle man and already have a memory of the subject. Though I do take some notes in class, those that are taken by pen to paper have a much shorter distance to travel, and therefore seem so much closer in proximity to my internal thoughts.

There is something very puzzling in the way that my peers will flippantly tell me “we’re just products of our culture,” when I press them about their laptop use. It’s true that we are all products of the culture from whence we sprang, but more so I believe that we are products of our nature. Half a million years of human evolution has brought us to now, and there is no way that the naked ape has made an evolutionary jump in only one generation that would allow us to devote pure attention to many stimuli, instead of just one. Scientific experiments such as dichotic listening tests have proved that conscious thought only has the capacity to pay attention to one source of input at a time (Lindsay, Paulhus, & Nairne, 2006, p. 179), yet erroneously, my peers seem to assume that this limitation of the human brain does not apply to them. The truth is that the “multi-taskers” in the classroom are both distracted by everything, and conscious of everything simultaneously which can only result in a superficial awareness of anything. Recognition of our natural born limitations are key to maintaining the inner self, even in this sped-up culture of over stimulation.

As human animals, we have been given the unique gift of self-awareness and the ability to self-determination. We are not now, nor have we ever been, hurtling uncontrollably towards an inevitable collective consciousness. The individual will survive this hyper-culture of the digital age even if it means adapting to exist within it. Certainly the technology of this age will play an enormous role in shaping and evolving our society. Sven Birkerts (1994) assertion that “the idea of what it means to be a person living a life will be much changed” (p. 130) is categorically correct, but is in no way a condition that is unique to this period in history. Human existence is always shifting to incorporate new facets of our constantly evolving reality, and human animals have always proven themselves to be adaptable. We are in no danger of that changing now.



References
Birkerts, S. (1994). Into the electronic millennium. The Gutenberg elegies. New York: Ballantine.
Lindsay, D. S., Paulhus, D. L., & Nairne, J. S. (2006). Psychology: The adaptive mind (3rd ed.). Toronto: Thomson Nelson.
Marchand, P. (1989). Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger. Toronto: Random House.
McLuhan, M. (1995). Playboy Interview. Essential McLuhan. (E. McLuhan & F. Zingrone, Eds.). Toronto: House of Anansi
Plato. (n.d./1973). The inferiority of the written to the spoken word. Phaedrus and the seventh and eighth letters: Phaedrus. (W. Hamilton, Trans.). New York: Penguin.