The Shallows

Just from reading and processing the first few pages of The Shallows brought me back to the days of my later childhood when I was at the point of graduating elementary school and transitioning to junior high school. Since my mother was a teacher, she always gave me books to read just so I would not end up immersing my mind into technology. She always hoped that I would have continued my engaged reading for enjoyment, especially through high school and college. Well Mom, I'm sorry to have disappointed you, but the idea of deep thought in reading is just not viable anymore. What I have derived from the few chapters so far of "The Shallows" is that we are using the internet in replacement of physical sources of information, such as books and periodicals, and have, as a result, lost the deep thought that was needed in order to fully comprehend and process information.

As a songwriter, I often find myself nowadays depending on technology (laptop, iPod, Android notepad) to jot down my melodic ideas. Even some popular artists have also used this technique, and as our society is continuously moving forward and accelerating, people need sources of information as quickly and as efficiently as possible without truly embracing the true meaning of the information. There was a quote on page 19, said by Koselitz, where he states, "My thoughts in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper."By all means, I love to write creatively, and I honestly feel that once I started using technology to formulate my song ideas, instead of cross-outs and sloppy pen marks, my finished products became structured lines of text that were in a different, unusual form. Somehow I miss the days of writing in my songwriter's journal, and still wonder to this day if it was really the transition from the quality of pen and paper to a virtual notepad that changed my songwriting style; not to mention, I found myself memorizing my songs more as I physically wrote it as opposed to writing it on the virtual notepad...

Here is what someone working in the music biz practically told me,

“It seems the higher I climb the ladder, the more I realize they use less and less vision, and want practically a finished product presented to them…”

I feel that this is relevant to Carr's view of the internet and how it has transformed our thinking habits because he states that we are often distracted by different technologies, and we often need a generalized view or basic summarization of the information that we need without really having to think much about the other pieces of information that is being left out. How we access and interpret information today is similar to how an A&R (Artist and Repertoire) Executive briefly skims through demos, only listening to 10-15 seconds of a song in order to determine if it is actually a hit or not. In other words, we only choose the main view of our information, but like a song, we tend to use the summarized version of what we need and neglect the actual meaning of our content that requires deep intuitive thought.

That’s what also happens once students make the transition to college. We multi-task, and therefore the tiny space we have to process information is lost. Once we are faced with deep thought, we become overwhelmed by the thought of processing more information than expected.

Reflections on Thursday's Class

From reading Bifo's views about autonomy within today's society and how technology diminishes the emotional effect of communication, there were many interesting ideas from Thursday that I jotted down and decided to put my own reflection on from chapters 4-8. Though the first few Bifo chapters seemed quite historically overwhelming, I felt more at ease with the later chapters, maybe since I can personally relate to many of the ideas that were expressed.

First off, In chapter 4, what I found very interesting was how Bifo claims the cellphone is seen as the assembly line of labor. This really struck me because I agree that in this age we have become fully dependent on smartphones, where even if we take a day off (or few days off) from work, we can still find an effective approach of completing tasks through technology without even being present at work. One example that comes to mind involved my absence from class for a couple days, where I had no access to any type of technology whatsoever because my phone had been damaged. I had felt out of touch with the world, and even at one point lost an aspect of time due to my dependence on technology. About two days later, once I received a new phone, it felt as if my world had spun on its axis yet again; everything had fallen back into place though in the meantime I developed my own sense of time cognitively... In short, what I derived mainly from this chapter was that technology is an extension of our availability, and that we rely on technology to provide flexibility within our lives.

Next, in Chapter 5, I couldn't help not taking one side from another when discussing the issue of how technology critically affects cognitive function, but I will say that comprehending and applying literacy to technology does result in the loss of the emotional connection that, for example, one would obtain from being taught by their parents or elders. I will also add that there is also an emotional disconnection between images that we share on Facebook and the images and memories that have been stored in our thoughts. For instance, when someone looks through another user's images, they are viewing the image from an outsider's point of view, and may not recognize the significant memory that was shared during the moment that the photo was taken. Also, another element that adds to the emotional disconnect through imagery is the limited amount of time that is spent looking through one's album which also contributes to the emotional disconnection. Moreover, the more information (or images) that we look through, the more dissonance of information arises which results in the increasing lack of attention that we pay to the overload of information.

What I also found interesting about Chapter 6 is that although through the idea repression, thoughts and emotions become internalized and build up over time, hyper-expressivity is what Bifo views as the main cause of disorders. It is as if the more freedom or autonomy people have to express themselves, the more prone people are to have several psycho-pathological disorders, since it is not solely based on an individual level, but on a mass level. However, was Bifo stating that art shouldn't be therapeutic due to the revolts of different people's opinions?