Our world’s all topsy-turvy. Take, for example, the nerd. Though once shunned, ridiculed and made the butt of jokes, he is today’s celebrated and oft Midas-touch Digital Conquistador.
This multitasking 21st Century Diginaut straddles and comfortably interchanges fantastic virtualities with our familiar, if mundane, “real” world. It’s suggested that discovering, exploring and laying claim to new digital places provides cyber-pathfinders with emotional palates as deeply felt, vibrant and colorful as humans are capable of experiencing. With these tools are painted worlds that are seductive and fun, hyper-exciting, orgasmic and intellectually stimulating. They may also be addictive.
But wait! Even this newest Matrix-merging bifurcated “reality” is already as dead as the slide rule – and as barren as sterile rock. Yet from these merged-world ashes hydra-headed galaxies spring forth, tunneling into the imagination’s cornucopia of deep-shaft psychological wounds, fevered hallucinations, mythic visions and outbounded notions not yet even whispered or hinted at. While traditional realities recede our virtualness metamorphs into timeless universes waiting to be imagined.
Which leads to the recent PBS Frontline docu, Digital Nation.
Highlights include:
1) …the MIT student who can’t recall having last read a book…
2) …collegiates thinking and composing in paragraphs – they disjointed – one..from…each…of…the…others…
3) …video game addiction…
4) …a U.S. Army recruitment cyberland designed to lure young teens…
5) …a Christian drone fighter pilot killing Pakistanis while safely seated in Nevada…
6) …young adults convinced chronic multi-tasking enhances information handling, while testing shows it “creates people who aren’t able to think clearly.”
7) …how high brain scan activity associated with media multi-tasking may be much ado about mumbo jumbo…
8) …that no one is looking into real and on-going effects of online exposure…
9) …that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk…
10) …a curriculum designed to cyberwash South Korean 2nd graders…
11) …a school principal’s claim that “Technology is like oxygen”
12) ….internet ethics and etiquette espoused…
13) …instant gratification education “teaching you should have every urge satisfied the moment the urge occurs.”
14) …how “our kids are going to need different skills five years from now then they need today.”
15) …profs, by a 2-1 margin say students are less prepared for college than students 10 years ago. But does our educational system recognize, or is it even capable of keeping pace with the onslaught of technowizardry beach-heading the consumer marketplace daily? Are these “old school” teachers equipped to digest profound and continual change demanded for facilitating effective learning experiences?
16) …is this “dumbest generation” actually advancing human evolutionary development?
17) …an educator, noting knowledge passed from the oral tradition on through to the Gutenberg Galaxy to our present digital universe, says “I don’t know if the book, which has been the mode for the last couple centuries is the best way to transfer information today.”
18) …“Cooking with Bubbie,” a popular online show starring an 83 year old cyber queen…
19) …the World of Warcraft providing meaningful, and emotionally and intellectually satisfying lives…for some…
20) …cyberguilds reframing the familial unit, friendship, the clan, community and nationhood…
21) …a couple enthuse that their “first date was when he broke into a castle to save me online. It was so romantic.”
22) …the program Virtual World destroys teleconferencing…
23) …3D virtual realities so enhanced they are judged preferable to “real” life…
