Technoholics (iPod, TiVo, Etc)

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the center, by its side a reading-desk—that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh—a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that this room belongs.

Taken from a 1909 story, “The Machine Stops,” by E.M. Forster.

Thanks to Mere Comments (and a host of other links) for alerting us all to this long but worthy read by Christine Rosen in the New Atlantis. Here follows a few excerpts but, really, do go read the whole thing …

This avoids the more important question of whether watching TV is really what we should be spending so much time doing in the first place. We are talking about the technology, not about what it encourages us to do. Like e-mail, TiVo offers us a more efficient way to perform a particular task, but in this case that “task” is watching television. For those who worry about the negative impact of television, this is akin to celebrating the invention of an easier and more effective syringe for injecting heroin.

Meat powder made Pavlov’s dog drool; television does something similar to our brains. As an extensive treatment of television viewing habits in Scientific American noted in 2002, “Psychologists and psychiatrists formally define substance dependence as a disorder characterized by criteria that include spending a great deal of time using the substance; using it more often than one intends; thinking about reducing use or making repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce use; giving up important social, family, or occupational activities to use it; and reporting withdrawal symptoms when one stops using it.” Researchers have found that “all these criteria can apply to people who watch a lot of television.”

An April 2004 study in Pediatrics concluded that “hours of television viewed per day at both ages one and three was associated with attentional problems at age seven,” even controlling for factors such as socioeconomic status. “Limiting young children’s exposure to television as a medium during formative years of brain development,” they concluded, “may reduce children’s subsequent risk of developing ADHD” (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder).

When he introduced the iPod, Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed that “listening to music will never be the same again.” Judging by the testimonials of iPod users, this was not merely marketing overstatement. One iPod enthusiast spoke of his device in tones one usually reserves for describing a powerful deity: “It’s with me anywhere, anytime…. It’s there all the time. It’s instant gratification for music…. It’s God’s own jukebox.” Like TiVo, iPod inspires feverish devotion in its users.

Like TiVo, control is the reason people give when asked why they love iPod. In a February 2004 interview with Wired News, Michael Bull, who teaches at the University of Sussex and writes extensively about portable music devices, argued, “People like to be in control. They are controlling their space, their time and their interaction…. That can’t be understated—it gives them a lot of pleasure.” Like TiVo, this degree of control, once experienced, inspires great loyalty; the praise of iPod users echoes that of TiVo owners, both of whom often remark on how they can’t believe they ever lived without the devices. But because the iPod is a portable technology, just like the cell phone, it has an impact on social space that TiVo does not. Those people with white wires dangling from their ears might be enjoying their unique life soundtrack, but they are also practicing “absent presence” in public spaces, paying little or no attention to the world immediately around them. Bull is unconcerned with the possible selfishness this might foster: “How often do you talk to people in public anyway?” he asks.

It is no coincidence that we impute God-like powers to our technologies of personalization (TiVo, iPod) that we would never impute to gate-keeping technologies. No one ever referred to Caller ID as “Jehovah’s Secretary.”

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein engaged this dilemma in his book, Republic.com. Sunstein argues that our technologies—especially the Internet—are encouraging group polarization: “As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving.” Borrowing the idea of “the daily me” from M.I.T. technologist Nicholas Negroponte, Sunstein describes a world where “you need not come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less.” Sunstein is concerned about the possible negative effects this will have on deliberative democratic discourse, and he urges websites to include links to sites that carry alternative views. Although his solutions bear a trace of impractical ivory tower earnestness—you can lead a rabid partisan to water, after all, but you can’t make him drink—his diagnosis of the problem is compelling. “People should be exposed to materials that they would not have chosen in advance,” he notes. “Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself.”

Sunstein’s insights have lessons beyond politics. If these technologies facilitate polarization in politics, what influence are they exerting over art, literature, and music? In our haste to find the quickest, most convenient, and most easily individualized way of getting what we want, are we creating eclectic personal theaters or sophisticated echo chambers? Are we promoting a creative individualism or a narrow individualism? An expansion of choices or a deadening of taste?

Seriously, if you haven’t already, GO HERE.