I’m annoyed. I’m staring at my monitor preparing to write my next blog on a totally different subject and all I can think is -- I am annoyed.
Over the last few days, while doing research for the blog I’d planned, I’ve run across several interviews, articles, and a new release in print books advocating we all put down our digital devices. Now. The tone of each author is vehement – as if any one of our digital devices is an explosion waiting to happen.
It’s the vehemence of their tone that is troubling to me. Equally troubling is the repeated assertion that face-to-face human connection always trumps any and all digital interactions. Such blanket statements don’t take into account we have crossed a threshold into a new, digital world which we don’t completely comprehend. Yet. Nor do such statements allow room for the unseen and the unknown of this new digital word.
Operating digitally is a very recent phenomenon for humanity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the personal computer was introduced in 1984. In 1991, the World Wide Web debuted as a publicly available service on the Internet. We’ve barely hit the thirty year mark from these thresholds into a new form of communication. We are in a whole new playing field.
The authors and interviewees have valid concerns and make salient points about our obsession with all things digital. Maybe the issue isn’t our immersion into in this new world. Maybe it’s our lack of understanding of what the digital world actually represents.
Let’s say we subscribe to the old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention”. What was the necessity for humanity to create such a pervasive digital world? Why is the global community so readily adapting to it? Is it because it serves our 21st century communication purposes? Yes. Is it because an e-book saves trees? Yes. Is it the mountain that you climb just because it is there? Yes. Are there risks and dangers to the creation of digital devices? Yes. There are numerous hidden costs – mining the needed minerals through forced labor, destruction of the environment, benzene poisoning of the workers who put together the devices. The list is a long one. Yet, even with the perks and the dangers, I think there is something more, something deeper to our embracing all things digital.
There are two terms used for people who adopt new technology – Early Adopters and Late Adopters. Early Adopters are those who embrace the latest technology before it hits the mainstream. A Late Adopter is someone who is slow to take on any new technology but eventually succumbs when the price goes down or it has become the symbol of what is considered cool.
What if we based our definition not on when a person embraces a new digital technology, but rather on how many years of their life has been influenced by hand-held digital technology? One-third, two-thirds, all of their life? For the sake of this blog, I’d like to propose re-defining these terms to mean that anyone born after 2007 is an early adopter. Anyone born prior to 2007, even if they purchase their devices ahead of the curve and are the first to tweet, scan, or pin, is a late adopter. No matter how quickly they acquire the next new technology, they will ALWAYS be a late adopter – because of their age.
Why make this distinction? Even before they can put together entire paragraphs of language, a child born after 2007 understands that the cell phone represents an unseen world of communication. Yes, the telephone has been around since the 1870s and yes, I played “telephone” with a rotary phone as a child. There is something different about the use of the cell – it connects us to an unseen Other when we communicate (not unlike a telephone) but it also connects us to the unseen World Wide Web. Understand that the Web is not the Internet. It is a service (like email, instant messaging) that operates over the Internet. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. Think about that. A playing card size device (or a wrist-watch like Samsung’s Galaxy) connects a child to a global system of inter-connected computers through a service which is a global medium for distributing information. Neither the Web nor the Internet can be touched, tasted, felt, or seen. Late adopters can only comprehend the results of them when we download our email, do a Google search, or e-chat a friend in Asia. As a late adopter, we understand this in theory. As an early adopter, again those born since 2007, this is how the world works. It is their norm to e-chat someone in Asia.
This brings me to the questions I’m pondering.
We know that the neurons in our brain are constantly being upgraded. New connections are being made, old ones deleted. What if the only world you have ever known includes a device that connects you to an unseen world, would your brain be wired differently from the get-go?
What if these new humans have a different understanding of what it means to be human? What it means to interact? To communicate? What if their brains truly are wired differently now because of their use of digital devices before they command language? Could we be looking at a threshold in human development not unlike the crossover humanity made approximately 4000 years ago when we relinquished being a totally oral society and embraced the use of a written language? What if humanity, and the human brain, is going through another such quantum shift? What if these true early adopters, who have always understood a digital device has the capability to connect them to an unseen world, are the forerunners of an expanded human brain? What if these expanded brains can consciously explore the quantum field of humanity’s global mind?
The assumption is being made that face-to-face human interaction always trumps the digital world. I propose that we are stumbling our way to a greater comprehension of the unseen quantum field. Just like in the transition from cave drawings to an alphabet, could these early adopters be the scribes and priests who hold the sacred knowledge of this new era?
Over the last few days, while doing research for the blog I’d planned, I’ve run across several interviews, articles, and a new release in print books advocating we all put down our digital devices. Now. The tone of each author is vehement – as if any one of our digital devices is an explosion waiting to happen.
It’s the vehemence of their tone that is troubling to me. Equally troubling is the repeated assertion that face-to-face human connection always trumps any and all digital interactions. Such blanket statements don’t take into account we have crossed a threshold into a new, digital world which we don’t completely comprehend. Yet. Nor do such statements allow room for the unseen and the unknown of this new digital word.
Operating digitally is a very recent phenomenon for humanity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the personal computer was introduced in 1984. In 1991, the World Wide Web debuted as a publicly available service on the Internet. We’ve barely hit the thirty year mark from these thresholds into a new form of communication. We are in a whole new playing field.
The authors and interviewees have valid concerns and make salient points about our obsession with all things digital. Maybe the issue isn’t our immersion into in this new world. Maybe it’s our lack of understanding of what the digital world actually represents.
Let’s say we subscribe to the old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention”. What was the necessity for humanity to create such a pervasive digital world? Why is the global community so readily adapting to it? Is it because it serves our 21st century communication purposes? Yes. Is it because an e-book saves trees? Yes. Is it the mountain that you climb just because it is there? Yes. Are there risks and dangers to the creation of digital devices? Yes. There are numerous hidden costs – mining the needed minerals through forced labor, destruction of the environment, benzene poisoning of the workers who put together the devices. The list is a long one. Yet, even with the perks and the dangers, I think there is something more, something deeper to our embracing all things digital.
There are two terms used for people who adopt new technology – Early Adopters and Late Adopters. Early Adopters are those who embrace the latest technology before it hits the mainstream. A Late Adopter is someone who is slow to take on any new technology but eventually succumbs when the price goes down or it has become the symbol of what is considered cool.
What if we based our definition not on when a person embraces a new digital technology, but rather on how many years of their life has been influenced by hand-held digital technology? One-third, two-thirds, all of their life? For the sake of this blog, I’d like to propose re-defining these terms to mean that anyone born after 2007 is an early adopter. Anyone born prior to 2007, even if they purchase their devices ahead of the curve and are the first to tweet, scan, or pin, is a late adopter. No matter how quickly they acquire the next new technology, they will ALWAYS be a late adopter – because of their age.
Why make this distinction? Even before they can put together entire paragraphs of language, a child born after 2007 understands that the cell phone represents an unseen world of communication. Yes, the telephone has been around since the 1870s and yes, I played “telephone” with a rotary phone as a child. There is something different about the use of the cell – it connects us to an unseen Other when we communicate (not unlike a telephone) but it also connects us to the unseen World Wide Web. Understand that the Web is not the Internet. It is a service (like email, instant messaging) that operates over the Internet. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. Think about that. A playing card size device (or a wrist-watch like Samsung’s Galaxy) connects a child to a global system of inter-connected computers through a service which is a global medium for distributing information. Neither the Web nor the Internet can be touched, tasted, felt, or seen. Late adopters can only comprehend the results of them when we download our email, do a Google search, or e-chat a friend in Asia. As a late adopter, we understand this in theory. As an early adopter, again those born since 2007, this is how the world works. It is their norm to e-chat someone in Asia.
This brings me to the questions I’m pondering.
We know that the neurons in our brain are constantly being upgraded. New connections are being made, old ones deleted. What if the only world you have ever known includes a device that connects you to an unseen world, would your brain be wired differently from the get-go?
What if these new humans have a different understanding of what it means to be human? What it means to interact? To communicate? What if their brains truly are wired differently now because of their use of digital devices before they command language? Could we be looking at a threshold in human development not unlike the crossover humanity made approximately 4000 years ago when we relinquished being a totally oral society and embraced the use of a written language? What if humanity, and the human brain, is going through another such quantum shift? What if these true early adopters, who have always understood a digital device has the capability to connect them to an unseen world, are the forerunners of an expanded human brain? What if these expanded brains can consciously explore the quantum field of humanity’s global mind?
The assumption is being made that face-to-face human interaction always trumps the digital world. I propose that we are stumbling our way to a greater comprehension of the unseen quantum field. Just like in the transition from cave drawings to an alphabet, could these early adopters be the scribes and priests who hold the sacred knowledge of this new era?
