The Digital Age

Let's consider the pro's and con's of the digital age.

• We Socialise In A New Way - we don’t learn how to read facial expressions or navigate “real world” social situations.

• It's Becoming Harder To Concentrate - Heavy multitaskers are much more easily distracted.

• The Types Of Friends We Make Is Changing - We're becoming more tribal and less exposed to people with interests or beliefs different from our own.

• There’s An Awe-Inspiring Online World To Discover - Our fondness for the search field may lead to real-life adventures later on.

• Privacy May Soon Be A Thing Of The Past - We might be forced to change our names one day in order to escape our cyber past.

• We Could Stay Sharper, For Longer - Searching and browsing on the internet exercises the brain in a way that is similar to solving a crossword puzzle.

• We Procrastinate More - At the flip of your wrist, there’s YouTube, chat rooms, jokes, humour – whatever’s your poison, it’s all out there.  

• Video Games Are Teaching Us New Skills - The skills required for video games are being harnessed to useful ends in education, health and even geo-politics.

• Technology Is Starting To Correct The Damage It Causes - RSI will soon be a thing of the past. Instead, everything we presently see on computers, games consoles, tablets or smartphones will be projected in front of our eyes and we will use hand gestures and voice commands instead of keyboards, mouse clicks or iPhone “swipes”. 

• We’re Becoming Less Empathetic - This is down to the superficial way we consume information.

• Our Memory Is Deteriorating - As it is now so easy to find information via Google we are getting worse at remembering any facts at all. 

• We're Becoming “Cyberchondriacs” - GPs now estimate a day a week is spent dealing with patients who have diagnosed themselves online.  

So do the pro's outweigh the con's?

It will probably be years before we start to really understand the impact of some of these drawbacks and potential issues.

"I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders."
~~ Diane Ackerman

The Twelve Apostles - Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia - April 2014

Diane Ackerman

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The Sunday Drive and the App

Does anyone still go on a Sunday drive? The 1970's, I suppose, was the last time it was commonly done. People would set out with no set purpose or aim, heading up the coast, then motor back to town.

The car itself was so engrossing, so interesting, so innately sexy, that time spent in its company required no further reward.

To most of us, that now seems nutty. The point is to get somewhere!

Young people in particular have fallen out of love with the car. They would rather travel on public transport and check their iPhone/Smartphone, the item that's replaced the car as an expression of freedom and adulthood.

There's a battle being waged over those digital devices, some argue the apocalypse is upon us: parents, themselves distracted by their devices, have allowed a generation of young people to rewire their own brains.

This, of course, brings hoots of derision from those who argue that humanity has always embraced new technology and become richer and wiser for it.

The history of the car - and of that Sunday drive - might be a good place to start.

When cars came on the scene there was great anxiety. The technology was seen as alarming and dangerous; drivers were required to hire a man to walk ahead of the vehicle waving a red flag.

In retrospect this seems absurd, yet this was followed by a period that, to our eyes, now appears equally absurd: a time in which the new technology was embraced with such abandon, with such uncritical glee, that it was allowed to remake the world in its own image.

Cars were fun and liberating - that's why we fell for them with such a swoon - yet they also poisoned our lungs, chewed up our countryside and brought foreign wars to secure fuel.

We were unwilling to put any limit on a device so intriguing, so liberating. Adding a seatbelt was a battle that took years. Lead was left in the petrol because the engine seemed to like it.

Most of us look back at that period with bewilderment. We now believe the car should be tamed so it suits our wider needs: seatbelts, emission limits, a better balance between spending on road and rail.

Which brings us back to those digital devices. We are midway, it seems to me, along a road we have already travelled. As with the car, we started with outright anxiety - the red-flag period - then entered a period in which the technology became dominant, as if it were setting its own rules.

This, for many households, is where we are now. Kids and adults sit, dotted around the house, all using different devices, skipping from app to app, for hours at a time.

This is not done to get anywhere, to achieve anything; it's for the pleasure of time spent with the device.

Remember that Sunday drive?

The spaghetti junctions of LA still represent the worst of the motor car and its unfettered dominance. Will the rewired spaghetti of our brains come to represent a similar period of uncritical embrace?

No sensible person believes we can take a hammer to all new technology. True, we couldn't eradicate those mechanised looms, but they could be bent to better suit human needs.

Maybe we now need some push-back of our own. If nothing else, someone needs to say the obvious: if you wanted to produce a machine for creating social anxiety, particularly in teenagers, you'd probably come up with something that looked exactly like Facebook.

When parents demand children put down their devices, or when they make a deal with themselves to take a digital holiday, they are not being Luddites. They are merely getting ahead of an inevitable wave - one in which we will all understand that this technology, like all those that preceded it, must be bent to our needs.

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
~~H.G. Wells

"Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly."
~~Author Unknown




This is me at the family home in 1974 in my Sprite



Love this photo!