The Marlowsphere Blog (#85)
Is it mere coincidence that the economic and demographic symptoms articulated in last week’s blog (Blog #84) parallel the explosion of mobile electronic devices, video games, 24/7 cable news, and the Internet on a global basis?
Increasingly, people—especially younger people—are looking down at their mobile electronic devices, rather than looking straight ahead at where they’re going (or not going). Increasingly, I see groups of teenagers or twenty-somethings gathering at an eatery with mobile devices in hand. Rather than talking with one another, they are sitting around the table texting. What then is the point of the social gathering? To use electronic social media? Apparently, texting is more important than face-to-face conversation, conversation that enhances communication and an exchange of views and information.
The growth of video games, for example “Grand Theft Auto 5,” is exponential. But what do video games enhance? Do they enhance learning? Yes, in a manner of speaking. They enhance hand-eye coordination using one’s thumbs. They also have the potential to enhance the dulling of the moral imperative with respect to the importance of protecting life. In effect, many video games teach destruction and killing at the press of a button without having to bear the responsibility or to suffer the consequences for one’s actions.
All-day/all night television news—inaugurated by Ted Turner’s Cable News Network in April 1980—transformed the delivery of news on television, broadcast or otherwise. While this can be seen as a major advantage to news junkies, it has also enhanced the direction of news content. Over the same time period that is the focus of this blog, news content has increasingly covered the lives of so-called “celebrities.” American television and print news has become more focused on “gossip” than on far, far more important issues, such as world illiteracy, global warming, food and water supplies, space exploration, terrorism and the spread of weapons of war. Yes, it could be argued that one has nothing to do with other, but when you have 24 hours of news to fill, the tendency, apparently, has been to go to the lowest common denominator and talk about people, rather than events and ideas.
The Internet—the impression we have in the United States is that everyone is on the Internet. Not true, of course. Only about one-third of the world’s seven billion people have access to the Internet. While it provides an abundance of information, it also gives the impression that answers to all questions are instantaneous and true! The problem is that without corroboration, information on the Internet could not be true, from the mildly inaccurate to the blatant extreme exaggeration.
All in all, in the period between 1980 and now—a span of 30+ years; essentially one generation—the United States has fallen much deeper in debt, is more focused on the vagaries and vicissitudes of celebrities through a constant bombardment of print and electronic media, the media industry itself is now owned by fewer and fewer companies, and fewer and fewer individuals own more and more financials assets. (see Blog #13)
Is there a connection between the economic and demographic symptoms described in my previous blog and the technological developments alluded to in this blog and the consistent decline in SAT scores in this country?
Those in control—in government at all levels and private and non-profit corporations—appear more interested in their own power and control than the welfare of the populace . . . or so it seems. There is a striking line from the movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” where Commander Spock, about to die from a lethal dose of radiation poisoning, states “The needs of the many out-weight the needs of the few, or the one.” The United States as a country was founded on the importance of the freedom of the individual, but also on the need for community. There will be those, of course, who will very quick to point out that even though the Declaration of Independence states “. . . all men are created equal,” the original Constitution did not give freedom to blacks, i.e., slaves, or the vote to women. That took a few more hundred years to get resolved. Nonetheless, the separation of powers as a countervailing force against the potential governing dominance of a king or a dictator, and the separation of church and state—a radical notion at the time—are in meaningful part the fundamental principles upon which the United States has evolved into the world’s leading economic power, at least until now!
It seems a contradiction that while the United States has heretofore led the global economy with technological advancement−in electronics and space exploration, for example–that at the same time the younger generation’s ability to learn and to solve problems appears to be slipping. Or is it that SAT scores skew our perspective on a younger generation that is, perhaps, in fact more entrepreneurial than the previous generation! The picture is not clear, certainly, and it is always dangerous to presume you have all the facts when not enough time has passed.
What is clear is that in a little over a generation the rich have gotten richer, the poor have become poorer, and the middle class has gotten the short end of the economic stick. What is clear is that a handful of corporations own a substantial majority of media assets and in the same time period of accumulation more and more media venues—print and electronic—have focused our attention on celebrities of the moment and distracted us from larger questions of global warming, religious strife, and the spread of weapons—not only into the hands of terrorists, but also into the hands of the mentally unstable.
At the same time, educational systems at all levels have become increasingly dependent on electronic systems without any forethought as to the consequences of such a sea change. Attempt to think back to the time when early writing systems were aborning. Do you think for a moment that the impact on the general population was benign? Even a cursory analysis would indicate that as tribal cultures morphed into larger societies with writing systems as the primary means of communication, control of these same cultures moved from a system of governance where other than the chief all persons were pretty much equal, to a system of governance dominated by a pharaoh, a king, a queen, or a dictator with absolute—not shared—power.
The larger view has to be that since the commercial introduction of the telegraph—a mere 170 years ago, not much time given the 4.3 billion years since the birth of the solar system—the world has become more global economically, the world’s population has grown exponentially, illiteracy has dropped to about 10-15% of the world’s population, man’s yearning for exploration now includes outer space, and the number of democracies has grown significantly, especially in the second half of the 20th century.
In the context of this blog, then, has the exponential growth of electronic information devices, mobile and otherwise in the United States, adversely affected our younger generation’s ability to learn, to solve problems, and take responsibility for one’s actions? While the Internet has become the world’s electronic encyclopedia—when was the last time someone sold you a set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s—such web sites as Wikipedia, for example, now provide information (some of it uncorroborated) at the press of a button. But life’s problems are not solved in the press of a button.
Media—depending on who’s in charge of it—can be used for good or ill, but we have yet to come to a firm conclusion on the long-term consequences of electronic media. We now know that early writing cultures changed the characteristics of oral-based cultures. We now know that writing cultures were globally affected by the advent of the printing press in the 15th century. We can observe that the spread of electronic media in the last 170 years has impacted the global order. The truth is: the consequences have not yet played themselves out.
Or are the economic and demographic symptoms previously described and the electronic technology developments mentioned above merely a distraction? Perhaps what is going on is the inexorable evolution of power shifts. Every empire has attempted to hold on to its power for as long as possible—just ask the Egyptian pharaohs, the Chinese, Greek, and Roman emperors, the Spanish, French, and British kings and queens, and the German and Russian dictators of the 20th century. Are any of them around anymore? The 20th century was America’s century certainly, but it is probable–if we project forward–that the 21st century will become known as Asia’s (China’s?) century.
Once the technological genie is out of the bottle you cannot put it back. Perhaps what we are seeing is the inevitable, cyclical shift of economic power from one regional center to another. One region rises, others decline, relatively speaking. Has America seen its time in the economic sun, or is it that other nation-states are also rising and we are not alone at the top of the heap anymore? Certainly, in this country, the exponential spread of electronic devices, the heavy concentration of media assets in the hands of a few, and the political paralysis in Washington especially due to extremist political philosophies on the left and the right have blinded us and distracted us from the larger global context. Just like tectonic plates, power shifts are inevitable and we are witnessing one right now. But we are also contributing to our loss of position in the world order. That has to change as well.
Please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any other of my blogs.
Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
November 11, 2013
© Eugene Marlow 2013