Two Words, One Answer.
Dark Age
 Dark Age England: A Journey Back in Time (Lost Treasures of the Ancient World) $19.99 It's difficult to compress the Dark Ages into a 50 minute DVD, but this attempt is middling worthy of its epic topic, though it's a bit thin. Many talking heads, and some re-enactments mar the effort. It's ok to watch if you get it from the library.  Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age $18.00 This author delves into those aspect of our society that has become a faceless techno-bureaucracy run by electronic gadgetry: a virtual culture of distraction, mindless inattentiveness and a purposefully devised culture of mental clutter. Mindless clutter has slowly become the norm replacing deep thinking, creativity, problem-solving and cohesive personal relationships between people. And here she tells us how we came to this state and what to do about it. On the question of how we came to it, the author suggests that we came to this state of existence both by mistaking "technocratic ability to manipulate gadgetry" with engaging in creativity and knowledge acquisition. But also it came about by a subtle change in the way we reckon time, distance and space, brought on mostly by an over dependence on electronic gadgetry, by the speed in communication, and on the way those in our culture move about the globe: We no longer "mark time," we control and layer it. The value we used to place on reflection and in cogitation has been replaced by a value on "time-splitting" multi-tasking and the layering of time. As a result, we have become a fragmented culture of split focus and anemic attention spans. Today, even though we are a truly global community, socialization is held together by the internet, cell phone texting, email, iPhones and iPods, CNN, TV ads, infomercials, video gaming, and "virtual", everything else. As Marshall McLuan told us four decades ago, these things alter our reality in fundamental ways, including in the way we relate to each other. In short, our relationship to time and space has changed radically. Our ability to explore so many false alternative realities at the same time, has caused a complete breakdown in our ability to focus and concentrate on the one reality that is important: the reality of learned experiences and the personal awareness that goes with it. We have become an AHD society. Toleration of a high level of background noise and fragmentation have become the new norm. We have learned to mistake manipulating electronic gadgetry with knowledge acquisition and creativity. We have become a culture of scanners and skimmers: broader but not very deep or much wiser. Also we are losing the ability to engage in the process of executive attention management, an operation of the pre-frontal cortex that allows us to create and interpret knowledge. Those who lack it, become technocratic-busy bodies, who may move around quickly as they multi-task, but retain less and less real and usable content and knowledge. They become shallow rather than deep learners. On the question of what to do about it, the first job of the socialization, process, according to the author, is to learn how to share focus and objects of attention. This process is critical to becoming social. Focus and attention are the indispensable bridges to socialization. The author's statistics show that families that live on TV have 25% less interaction within the family, especially between children and parents. Connectivity may be up, but social cohesion is way down. Ms. Jackson suggests that increased attention fuels deep thought as well as deeper more coherent social interactions. According to her, we need to change from a value system that rewards shallow manipulation to one that starts raising "attention athletes." We need more boredom in our lives, and more mental down time to free us from "mind clutter," and to free us up for creative thinking and problem solving. We need to inspire more young people to become citizens who value exercise of their minds over the ability to text-message while driving or rushing to the next meeting. Strengthening ones attention span is self-reinforcing and increases awareness across the board. We want our young people to engage in more memory and detective games (all of which empower awareness), and engaged less in TV watching, texting and emailing. We should de-clutter our environment, beginning with our public spaces: reduce TV monitors, PA systems. And in the home, we should turn the TV off and again begin to stop living by the clock and go back to living by "event based time." And finally, we need to become role models for attention by giving attention to others. I was disappointed that the book did not address how deceased attention spans and increased clutter is being driven by our corporate masters who sell us useless products and otherwise benefit from having an electorate that no longer reads books or has the ability to attend to anything beyond a political "sound bite." It is no accident that a culture of clutter and short attention spans is the perfect environment for demagoguery and corruption, which is pretty much where we are today. We are a conscious culture of clutter, in part because it serves the anti-democratic designs of those who have a strangle hold on the American political economy. Three Stars  The Dark Ages (The History Channel ) $24.95 This video is really good for bringing the "dark ages" to life. I show this to my high school students, and they gain a good sense of what life was like during the time after Rome's empire falls. The reenactments are great, and the narration gives enough information to hold the interests of my students. The added feature of the plague is very well done too. I would recommend this to everyone, but especially to history teachers and to those who just enjoy history. |
|
