So sayeth many a freshman & sophomore! While the cliché about Today's Society (as opposed to last Tuesday's?) causes Composition teachers all over the planet to groan and roll their eyes, there is a savant-like truth in this essay-filler phrase. I'm just not sure our texting students actually believe this notion; it's simply what they know.
I remember a friend who could not cut off his cell phone when we went out, always worried he'd "miss something," unable to focus on the experience of the moment, always with one foot poised to dash to the next social interaction. His excuse was he was just part of his ADD Generation.
We all live, however, in a culture of ADD. I find myself not focusing on one task or experience but multiple tasks & possible future-tense experiences. While I have argued with my husband that this may be an inherently female trait, (to wit he accuses me humorously of post-feminist sexism) at this moment in Our Society Today the ability to multi-task has become a human trait, one needed to survive the pace of both our work and play.
I may teach online, blog, and check news, weather, & email on my Blackberry; I may have married into XM, OnStar, and the I-phone; I may have discovered the difference between Blu-ray & HD DVDs, what LiveJournal is and where to find slash, what a WIKI is, where LOTR players meet, and the joys of MP3s, but I am breathless at the moment.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."
With all the shiny objects and glib n' ironic conversations surrounding me, with the demands placed upon being plugged in 24/7, I find it difficult to walk one path or keep a sustained thought. I feel like I am only treading water on the surface of a postmodern sea.
I leave you Dear Reader with this below video, and the question of whether or not this pace is progress or a downward spiral. Just don't view this while drinking coffee like I did! Heart palpitations may ensue!
4 comments:
I read Faster by James Gleick a few years ago, and then lent it to someone who chose not to give it back. Here's a quote from the chapter on Internet Time (found at Fasterbook.com, which may or may not be appropriate:
"As fluid pressure rises (you learn in high school physics), molecules collide faster and more often, and so the temperature rises too. Close packing and transmission speed are two sides of a coin; that is why sound travels faster through dense crystals."
I especially like the part about "dense crystals." ;-)
Where do the LOTR players meet? Nobody told us.
Unplug! It might not be socially acceptable anymore, but who cares about that?
As of this morning when I read a work email that made my blood pressure shoot up though the Dense Crystal, I swore to my husband, the cats, and myself that I would no longer turn on the Blackberry before leaving for work!
WOOO! Tell The Man to suck a root!!
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