.: Techno Wonderland :.

The other day, I was telling my brother Tim about my lunch date with a high school friend. In keeping with the typical behavior of a moody 16-year old, my brother wasn’t particularly interested in what I had to say. Nonetheless, I was determined to relay the details of my visit with my old classmate. However, as I continued to speak, I realized that my brother wasn’t just disinterested in my story; he was texting his friend on his cell phone, totally unaware of my attempt at conversation. At that moment, it dawned on me that like the millions of other teenagers around the world, my brother is a Digital Native. This term, coined in a 2001 article by Marc Prensky, refers to those who have been raised in the midst of the digital revolution. (Horstman, 2010) Born in the 90s, my brother has grown up immersed in a technological world, filled with television, cell phones, video games, and Wi-Fi. As I continued to ponder this long-overdue revelation, I realized that I, along with the rest of the world, am part of this frontier as well.

Today, the majority of people are wholly immersed in a digital lifestyle. We watch television, we surf the internet, we text or call our friends – in other words, we are continuously bombarded with digital stimuli. Our minds tend to be more scattered and we thrive off of the vast amount information provided to us through computers and the internet. However, in a world where the average teenager spends around 50 hours per week with digital media (McNally, & Fedde, 2010), I can’t help but ask an obvious question: How has digital media affected human communication?

First of all, “living in a digital world has changed the way we work, live, and interact…and how we acquire, use and dispense information.” (Horstman, 2010) Now more than ever, humans have access to a wealth of knowledge with the click of a mouse. Our behavioral and social patterns seem to be transforming, even to the point that it affects learning habits. (McNally, & Fedde, 2010) As stated in the article Brave New Brain, J. Horstman poses the idea that “today’s digital natives tend to absorb information quickly in small bites; have a short attention span; and multitask obsessively, paying attention to many things.” He goes on to say that the modern youth live in a completely interactive world, and that their minds follow a similar pattern. This necessitates the alteration of educational methods so that current and future students may better understand new ideas and concepts. Take this essay as a real-life example. Before writing this composition, I signed onto my course website and did research by sifting through course materials and online videos. I may never meet my teacher or interact with my classmates, yet I am required to abide by various deadlines so that I can keep up with my coursework. The manner and the media through which I am learning have drastically changed – I have minimal human interaction with maximum digital media use. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing – only that the human learning process has been fundamentally altered. 

Just as teaching methods will have to be adapted to the rise of technology, how will basic social interaction change? In the book What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, author Nicholas Carr states that “because we are often using our computers in a social context…the resulting self-consciousness…magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium.” Such a level of involvement with computers and other technology, coupled with diminished human interaction, can lead to changes in the way that people interrelate. For example, digital natives may have a harder time interpreting body language than those who adopted digital gadgets later in life. Conversations may tend to be somewhat short and choppy, seeing that creating small talk or maintaining a conversation is not necessarily needed with digital media. Although such issues may not yet pervade our society to a great extent, the future could yield problems in these areas as well as others.

All in all, technology holds many opportunities for the future of the human race. Whether it involves taking an online university course, video chatting on Skype, or texting the latest gossip to your best friend, human communication and interaction is most definitely evolving. It will be interesting to observe human relations as our world becomes more and more technologically integrated. Perhaps, the real challenge will not be how to embrace the newest high-tech gadgets, but how to exercise judgment and create balance while living in a Techno Wonderland.


RESOURCES:

Carr, N. (2010). What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Horstman, J. (2010). Scientific American: Brave New Brain. San Francisco: Wiley.

McNally, Caitlin (Producer), & Fedde R.A. (Producer). (2010). In, Digital Nation. PBS.