Media Deprivation

In the spring semester of 2007 Danna Walker, a professor at American University, gave her students an assignment she was unsure of. This was her first time assigning the “electronic media fast.” The task was to “live” 24 hours without any kind of electronic media; no television, no radio, no computers, no iPods, and especially NO CELL PHONES. Her goal was to have her students “think about the media-saturated world they live in and what its effects on them might be.” (Walker) Her article “The Longest Day,” her own personal and reflective analysis of the assignment, appeared in the Washington Post on August 5, 2007 and has since inspired certain professors to follow suit by assigning the same task. We were asked to complete the “grueling media deprivation challenge”…my experience was not quite successful.

My daily routine had to be changed drastically in order to complete the assignment and the members of my family had been prepped beforehand. My day began around 11:30 in the morning; I figured it would be best to sleep in considering the day ahead of me. I started my day with a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

My mother had left to go to work around 10 a.m. and she had left me a list of errands she wanted me to do that day. She wrote:

“Evan, please come to the office before you do anything this morning. Your father and I need you to pick up the deposit and take it to the bank. You’ll be getting $100 to go grocery shopping. I know you won’t be going to the gym to work out today so please try to have this done before Bobby gets home from school and please feed your niece and nephew. Adrianne will be dropping Kierra off from daycare around 4:00 but she has to go to class at 4:30. Make sure the puppy doesn’t pee anywhere also. Sorry this is so much, but I figured you wouldn’t have too much to do today since you have to do that silly assignment. Thank you.”

“Damn,” I thought. My mom was right about the gym. I had planned to work out a lot that Tuesday, but I couldn’t go to the gym; it’s filled with TVs and the radio is loud enough to rupture an ear drum. To top it off, it was freezing outside so there was no way I was going running. During my incurring let down, I decided to have a few more bowls of cereal. I figured I should take this day as slowly as possible; it was going to be a long one.

I hopped in my car and said to myself, “Hah! This will be a piece of cake. I’ll hang out in my car for most of the day and drive around.” My radio had been stolen a few months ago so there was nothing to tempt me while I was driving. I had actually gotten used to not having a radio in my car; I actually may even prefer it, especially during long drives. It gives me a lot of time to think.

I took a detour to my father’s office; I really wanted to drive through town, smoke a cigarette, and think about my day. A long, silent car ride was exactly what I needed. As I was driving I began doing some analysis of the assignment. I began thinking about the connection between the development of new media as means of communication throughout history and human dependency upon advances in communication. I find it so interesting to think about man’s need to transcend his isolation and I believe this is where the invention of language, written and oral, stems from. Human beings have this desperate desire to feel connected, whether it be to a person or thing, so we began communicating with one another in order to achieve this feeling of connection; however, it’s only a transient feeling. Once the communication ceases we revert back into our isolation; and so, in an effort to minimalize these feelings of isolation, we created more ways to communicate. We invented written language, we invented new communications media, we mass produced and industrialized and as time passed we created a world in which communication across the largest of distances is possible instantaneously. Walter Ong discusses points pertinent to my thought process in his article “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media.” He writes:

“Before writing, oral folk were group-minded because no feasible alternative had presented itself. In our age of secondary orality, we are group-minded self-consciously and programmatically. The individual feels that he or she, as an individual must be socially sensitive. Unlike members of a primary oral culture, who are turned outward because they had little occasion to turn inward; we are turned outward because we have turned inward. In a like vein, where primary orality promotes spontaneity because the analytic reflectiveness implemented by writing is unavailable, secondary orality promotes spontaneity because through analytic reflection we have decided that spontaneity is a good thing.” (Ong 69)

The rant occurring in my head ended abruptly when I arrived at my dad’s office. I ran inside, got the deposit slip from my parents, got back in my car, and started driving to the bank. Since I had taken the liberty of moving extremely slow that day, I was now in a rush. It was 2:00 in the afternoon and I still had much left in my agenda which needed to be completed by 4:00.

After I had finished running errands, I headed home to cook dinner and babysit. Mac and cheese and chicken tenders! I fed Kierra and put her up for a nap and then pigged out while Bobby played gameboy in the family room. When I was done eating I curled up on the couch with my new puppy and took a well deserved nap.

I had been sleeping like a rock when I woke up to my younger sister watching The L Word. Only semi-conscious I asked if it was the new season. Syd replied, “Yea man! We have it On Demand.”

Half-asleep, I started watching and as I slowly became more aware I screamed, “F**K!”

Syd looked at me confused. She had been in Philly for the past few days so she didn’t know I was doing an assignment. I explained. All she said was, “Well, you already started watching it and it’s a really good season.” Realizing she had a valid point I gave up on the assignment that day, planning to complete it another day that week. It didn’t happen. Syd and I finished watching the episode of The L Word and went out that night to a hookah bar.

Though I did fail to fully complete the assignment, I definitely was able to gain insight as to the difference between having electronic media available for use and not having it. I did think I would easily be able to complete the assignment and to reflect on the experience, I don’t believe there was a time when I truly was struggling with the task at hand. However, the practicality of the assignment seemed to be non-existent. I do realize that humans made it through thousands of years without any electronic media; yet, these media forms have become so normalized in our culture that it’s impossible to avoid them for a lengthy amount of time. I often felt that day that I was being catered to because my family knew I had to do the assignment; hence, my family acted as my electronic media. Had there been an emergency that day, and this was a possibility because I was babysitting a 6 year old and a 1 year old, the assignment could have created a conflict, and in that sense it seems that the technology we use is absolutely essential.

Works Cited
Ong, Walter. "Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media." Communication in History. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heye. Pearson Education, Inc. 64-70.

Walker, Danna L. "The Longest Day." Washington Post 5 Aug. 2007. 30 Mar. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR20070 80101720.html.

Peace, Love
Evan

MCS Lecture Series: Jackie Regales

"The Future of the Internet: Utopian and Dystopian Possibilities"

I attended the extra credit lecture by Jackie Regales in the Commons last night. The subject of the lecture was "which direction is the internet taking us?" She brought touched upon topics such as techno-utopianism, the troubles of wikipedia, MIT open course ware, and the trend of scholarly research being published online with free access.

Peace, Love
Evan

Dear Susan Jacoby: Call me a naive idealist...I'm certainly calling you an elitist snob!

Over the past few decades there has been a mass influx and integration of different technology and media into our world. As a current college student, I walk across campus and it is a rare occasion that I find someone who is not talking on a cell phone. Should I be at the RAC, I’ll find MTV-U being broadcasted over every television. When I go to class, a large percentage of students are using their laptops, myself included, to take notes and to also connect to the Internet through wireless servers putting immense amounts of information at their fingertips. In short, it is essentially impossible to avoid one’s daily dose of media and technology; however, the question at hand - and the question being posed by many - is should we be worried for our nation’s future? Has “easy-access information” overload taken a toll on our work ethic as a society? Are the technologies available to us ultimately making way for “generation sloth”? Has our nation reached an intellectual stand-still? In all honesty, and you may call me idealistic, there is no need for such worry.

In her article “The Dumbing of America” Susan Jacoby writes, “Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture…” (Jacoby) Jacoby has a valid point, video culture has certainly triumphed over print culture; she points out the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing unless required to do so for school more than doubled between 1984 and 2004; however, she later states she cannot prove reading for hours in a tree house, something she used to do when she was 13, creates more informed citizens. (Jacoby) Jacoby is trying to argue something she admittedly cannot prove. The article continues with similar sentiment; Jacoby truly does believe we are facing a crisis. She asserts technology is fostering ignorance in our culture and it is leading us to a dismal future. I beg to differ.

As is human nature, with progress also comes resistance: Plato feared writing would inhibit human memory capacity, the church criticized the printing press because they wanted to protect and be the sole interpreters of the "word of God." Throughout time, and especially in the past 150 years, every new technology has evoked some form of criticism. (Gardner) Jacoby’s argument is reminiscent of this kind of criticism, and though there is validity to her argument, I believe her anathema toward these new technologies stems from misjudgment of the future.

Howard Gardner has a different take on the subject. In his article “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading” he states, “Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy – or an ensemble of literacies – will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” (Gardner) Gardner takes a stand against dualistic thinking. He is asserting that since we have no idea what the future holds we may as well embrace the media present, and rather than focusing solely on the pro and con dichotomy that occurs simultaneously with the integration of new media, we must “triangulate.” We must “bear in mind our needs and desires, the media as they once were and currently are, and the media as they're continually transforming.” (Gardner)

As media transform and spawn new media, drastic cultural changes do occur, the majority of them being positive. In ancient Egypt, papyrus replaced stone as a writing medium leading to increased literacy, the development of script writing, and a more democratic system. The development of written language was met with opposition and scrutiny as stated above, yet we could not picture ourselves without such a system. All these developments in communications media caused great change, and though some may have not been well-received, through the course of time these changes became accepted as positive; it just takes a transitional period.

So enough with the pessimistic, elitist attitude; our culture has not yet lost its intellectual spark. Yes, print culture is in decline, but it isn’t something that will ever be completely lost. Our world is in a transitional period; we are still getting accustomed to mass media. This, however, by no means implies we are getting dumber. There is much time before us. We must accept the inevitable integration of new media and embrace the cultural changes that will accompany them. Step forward with a positive attitude and an open mind. After all, a bad attitude never got anybody anywhere.

Works Cited
Gardner, Howard. "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading." The Washington Post 17 Feb. 2008. 2 Mar. 2008 .

Jacoby, Susan. "The Dumbing of America." The Washington Post 17 Feb. 2008. 2 Mar. 2008 .

Peace, Love
Evan