The Coming Dark Ages?

After reading Distracted, I became curious as to whether or not our society is heading to a new dark ages. The author of distracted explains that since we are losing our capacity to maintain attention, civilization itself is coming to an end.
The concept of a postmodern dark age is not a new one. At each major step of technological and cultural change, there has always seemed the possibility of civilization's collapse. The perceived excesses of the youth culture of the 60s were once seen as the end of western civilization. This has manifested itself in our cultural imagination. One of the more obvious examples is the zombie film. Zombie movies chart the fear we have of losing our common humanity. A fear completely understandable in the light of the major atrocities of the twentieth century. This fear is inextricably linked to our discourse on technology. It's not a coincidence that the Zombies in Night of the Living Dead were created by radiation from a newly sent satellite to Venus.
The fear is also cosmic in a way. We are afraid that mankind has (to quote the pilot from Day of the Dead) "overstepped its britches". Of course the most obvious literary example of this would be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This fear underlies distracted. The second chapter ended with an almost poetic discussion of how the internet is severing us from our ties to location, to each other, and to the Earth as a whole. Implicit in this is the moral judgement that mankind must be bound by the laws of time and space, and any attempt to transcend them will end in Promethean tragedy.
The scary thing is, that this might all be true. There is more and more evidence that our technologically advanced lifestyles are changing the makeup of our brains. Maybe we slowly are becoming zombified?
But then, maybe the ability of humanity to transcend space and time isn't a bad thing. In many ways, this has been the goal of human art, religion, and science for millenia. Our technology might be simply the ability to realize these dreams. Even if this technology changes what it means to be human (something, I think, that has already happened) that change isn't necessarily negative. It might just be the growing pains of homo sapiens 2.0.

by the way, I should mention that historians are discovering all the ways in which people in the so-called Dark Ages were actually smarter than we are.

Save the Children!

Both of our readings this week, Distracted, and the Dumbest Generation, are highly suspicious of contemporary youth culture. Both authors blame this culture's failings on the rise of cyberspace. I actually share many of these authors' concerns with post-modern culture, however, in blaming the internet for this, I think they really miss the point.
Both authors point to a fundamental shift in the way young people appreciate knowledge. Mark Bauerlein, for instance, is apalled that children use their leisure time to actively forget their education, rather than to integrate its lessons into their daily lives. Both Jackson and Bauerlein treat knowledge almost with a twinge of religious awe. Mark Bauerlein especially relies on a deep veneration of the cannon to underlie his arguments.
I think the main factor in "the dumbing down" of is the commodification of knowledge.
The Dumbest Generation opened with a discussion of the culture of overachievement. Schools have become so focused on results, that the process of learning is ignored. All that counts is the test score not the knowledge itself. How can anyone enjoy learning in this context? Marx's concept of the alienation of labor is easily applicable here. The focus on providing good numbers and bright and colorful (though completely superficial) powerpoint demonstrations has made it impossible to focus on the intrinsic value of knowledge itself. In that situation, why wouldn't you try and distract yourself as much as possible?

The Future of Virtual Worlds?

The other day, my roommate showed me possibly the coolest digital marketing campaign I've ever seen. General Electric is trying to promote themselves as a "green" company by showcasing their "smart-grid" technology. Based on our class reading on market research, I would guess that GE is targeting early adopters.
The GE website enables you to hold a "hologram' of the smart grid in you hands. first you print out a piece of paper with a specific pattern. then you put it in front of you web-cam, and the pattern is recognized by your computer, and turns into a 3-d representation of the smart-grid. By moving the paper around, you can move the image of the smart-grid and view it from all angles.
My first thought on seeing this would be the possible application of this technology to virtual worlds like Second life. Imagine how much easier it would be to navigate in Second Life, if you could control your avatar by moving an object in real-space. Possibly, this could be combined with facial recognition technology to have an avatar's facial expressions correspond to real-time facial movements. Of course, this might just exacerbate the latency problems.

Legalize marijuana?

In the past few months, the legalization of marijuana for medical and even recreational use has gathered an unprecedented amount of media attention and public support. Massachusets recently decriminalized possesion of less than an ounce. The California State legislature is looking at a bill that will legalize and tax recreational cannabis. If this bill is passed (and it has support from the San Francisco Sheriff and members of the board of equalization) it should raise one billion dollars for the state budget.
In fact, out of all the questions online visitors submitted to president Obama, the number 1 question was whether he will legalize marijuana, and whether he thinks that this would help the economy. Obama laughed this question off, disingenuously saying that it "ranked fairly high' not that it was the most frequently asked question.
There are several factors allowing for this rise in public opinion. one is that the "powers that be' are finally beginning to realize how ineffective and destructive the war on drugs has become another is financial. During the great depression, prohibition was lifted because the governemnt needed the revenue from taxes on alcohol, could no longer afford the law enforcement expenditures, and wanted to cut off the main source of revenue for organized crime. certainly, considering the immense debt states are in, the staggering cost of arresting and jailing drug users, and the massive violence caused by the Mexican drug cartels, this historical parallel seems very relevant. (Though as with prohibition ending the war and drugs cannot singlehandedly rescue the economy.) However, I think that the main catalyst for this public debate is the web. web 2.0 is allowing for the public to play a much bigger role political discourse than ever before. The idea of participation has, in a very short time, taken root in our culture. Obama's online Q&A is a great example of this change. The
opnline community' is now considered as a legitamte political force, and as with most issues related to the new web, the major implication of this have yet to be fully realized.