During Winter semester of this year, my wife and I were in Washington, DC for an internship I had with a federal agency. It was a wonderful experience, and I learned a lot. Among many things that happened to me while in Washington, two events influence my thinking of how maybe the increasingly new developments in technology may not be as awesome as I might otherwise think. The first event was attending two film premiers at the DC Environmental Film Festival, and the second was reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.
1. DC Environmental Film Festival
We entered the auditorium and listened in on a few intense discussions about climate change, republicans, and film appreciation. I enjoyed being out of my comfort zone, and was excited to hear that Ralph Nader was in the audience! Anyway, we first saw a film about organic food and how the label gets tossed around, and then the second film was all about progress. Check out the director talking about his film - and watch the trailer if you want.
Now, in case you are feeling like "c'mon this guy is nuts!" or like this is some conspiracy movie, I understand. However, the film makes some really good points (in my opinion) about how often what we call progress isn't necessarily a good thing. I think when it comes to the digital age the prophets and apostles have done a grand job in helping us understand the dangers of "progress", but there are also blessings and benefits from the same things that come with new discoveries and methods.
The main point for me, is that we should be very attentive to how the digital age is influencing our humanity. It can help (connecting, creating, etc) but as I have written earlier, it can hurt too by distorting our sense of reality. It is easy, I believe, to get so attached to the new thing/gadget to the point where we forget how that thing can ground us to important and eternal ideas. This is why I think media literacy education (what we are currently engaged in) is so important for every student in today's classrooms.
2. Daniel Pink has some great books. Though highly anecdotal (not a bad thing), I feel he has some very relevant and helpful things to say. On his blog today he cited a Pew Research study (another place I got to visit while in DC) about how people across the nation would characterize the President or Mitt Romney in just one word. Pink predicts: "The one-word method will become more prevalent, especially as data meisters collect truckloads of linguistic information from social networks."
It is interesting to think about how the shortening of things will effect not only the way we do research (or where we gather data for research), but how we think, discuss, and form judgements. In a way, the "one-word method" sort of scares me into thinking this is a disastrous sign of not-happy progress. Maybe it shouldn't. Either way, I think that the more people that come to this planet and the more we build and create, the more we will have to come to terms that we better start sharing resources more efficiently, and use more than one word to communicate and understand one another.
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