New technologies encourage spontaneous, instant commentary. The technologies – here the software platforms – structure a discours of constant chatter. The technologies are geared in such a way as to make the practice of reflection and thinking irrelevent. The result is a massive onslaught of unstructured, ill-thought and vapid discourse that, again, gets passed off as serious or relevant. Thus a style comes about that hampers reflection and thought, or pushes away these aspects of experience. The chatter itself is not really the problem. The danger is that the technologies encourage, support or engender ill-thought practices and patterns and nothing more than these. As people interact with technologies, they come to see themselves via the technologies, and their practices become scattered, their comportement irratic and their expectations become low and confused. Patterns of communication, interaction and just going about ‘things’ become hectic and scambled. People start going about coping with themselves and others in such a messy way. The soundbite or summary gets passed off as concrete. Half-baked ideas or concepts are battered around in lieu of serious converstation. People miss themselves. Here, confusion reigns and there is, admist all the ‘technical’ abudance, or distraction, a hollow lack and deep unfullment. The technologies support and encourage this “postmodern” style. It is a dangerous style in that is encourages people to ignore themselves and to loose sight of themselves as they are. It does not have to be so, however. Nor is it the whole story.
Coming back to this thought, an allusion to the phenomenon in the Commentary matrix: “The shift to digital technologies from start to finish is evident in the image quality (digital sometimes looks less visually dense than film) and the ubiquity of hand-held (lightweight) cameras. Digital is affecting how stories are being told and perhaps also the kinds of stories being told.”[1]This simple reference to how digital technology is affecting story telling in film gets at the phenomenenon of how technology shifts how ‘humans’ are and understand themselves; how ‘humans’ will ‘mold’ themselves to the technology interface they employ in coping with themselves and the world. Technology and its way ‘shapes’, ‘molds’, ‘sets-up’, ‘orders’,'allows’, ‘requires’, ‘ordains’, ‘limits’, etc.. Technology is most certainly not benign. It is not a neutral type of tool, or a collection of indifferent mechanic devices. It’s very way - and it has its own special way – ‘bends’ the ‘human’ to it’s way. This ‘harnessing’ is what is key to see. It is from here – and only here, it seems - that understanding technology becomes possible. It must be experienced.
Returning once again to the thought: Technology is not ‘bad’ in itself. And, likewise, niether is it ‘good’ in itself. It just is as it is and in its way. Where ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘caring’ or ‘uncaring’, or ‘harmful’ or ‘helpful’ come into play is in the ‘how’ technology is understood and put into practice. Understanding requires deep seeing[2] of what might be called the ‘essence’ of technolgy. Its essence is it own way. Essence is tough to describe and to see. Nevertheless, technology must be understood as how it is what it is in itself and understood in its proper terms, or terms proper to it (thinking in this way is what phenomenology attempts to do). Practice means how technology is put to use, so to say, how far it is allowed to go and where it is allowed to be deployed. Each human makes this choice, it seems, within the limits each human is ‘in’ as a ‘community’ or ‘grouping’ somewhere. Of course, it being a techincal world, technology is impossible to flee from, but one can choose how far technology is allowed to roam and how much technology is allowed to govern, even if, for the time-being, one must, in a hypocrital way or, worse, sanctimoniously, pass jusdgement yet be incapable of actualizing an alternative (nb: the alternative has not yet taken form, but this is another question altogher). Getting back to the thought: On the whole, technology is certainly not ‘bad’, and, in fact, may be quite useful. It is only with technology that ‘humans’ will get themselves out of many a mess (and also into messes, alas!). So, it would be misguided to think of technology in terms of ‘bad’ (or ‘good’). This is the luddite opinion and it is, in fact, technical, in a way, and goes a long ways to allow technology to overgrow unchecked.
1 Manhola Dargis, “Awkward Embraces, Assured Directors”, The New York Times, 28:3 2011. Coming back to this thought, the author wrote another good article on movies in the NYT. Here she gets at the ‘experience’ of the movie as a modern form of dramatic performance in where, or where, understading in a communal dimension happens, and in particular the experience of going-to-the-movies-together. Digital technologies erode ‘togetherness’ and the movie experience, which, was already a rather reduced experience. Note that this erosion, the disappearaning togetherness the author describes, happens very much in the illusion of ‘togetherness’ or, better yet, ‘connectedness’ that technology affords. Yet, it is an at bottom an illusion and this illusion effect is part of the powerful sway of technology’s razzle dazzle.
2 “Deep seeing” is not a good term. However, it can be thought of in the way Clifford Geertz goes about ‘thick description’, which is a very popular interpretative method that most Social Science students will learn about at some point in time. On the whole, the interpretation requires sticking with the phenomenon of the everyday and attempting to render an understanding of the phenomena in its own terms. This seems to be the purpose of ‘thick description’ (Geertz was very influenced by Wittgenstien, ‘practice’, ‘play’ and the ‘everyday’). ‘Deep seeing’ would be the understanding that comes about from any attempt to understand the phenomenon as it is itself, that is by attempting to be as fidel as possible to the phenomenon. It is ‘deep’ in that the seeing ‘sees’ what is right there in front, that is, the hardest of all to see. Perhaps ‘insight’ would be a better term? See Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”. Daedalus 101(1 Winter 1972).
