Pixelated Brains and New Media: Part One

Edited and Produced by Karen Zarker

There’s a great deal of concerned talk, talk, talk out there about our shortening attention span, and it seems our demise (because let’s be frank – the overall tone is that whatever is happening to us is bad for the species) is all thanks to the advent of New Media. You know, all those pixel bits of blog entries, TV news quips shouting at us between blaring 30-second commercials, three-line gossipy blips under BIG PICTURES in glossy mags, proper grammar and punctuation lost to text messaging, sound bytes bouncing along the airwaves at varying decibels … Via these methods we nibble from an array of fast foods for thought, taking from what’s presented that which we like, eschewing the rest and flitting off, or perhaps Twittering off, to the next pretty shiny thing.

Consider, too, the shortened attention span of not only the reader (recipient/viewer), but the writer (sender/artist). Is micro-blogging unleashing the true power of citizen journalism? Or is it yet another symptom of the presumed ever shrinking attention span of the populace and the accompanying inability to concentrate on one thing for too long?

We remember reading about this phenomenon somewhere … where was that …?

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson (Prometheus, June 2008)

“Is Google Making us Stoopid? What the Internet is doing to our brains” by Nicholas Carr (Atlantic, July/August 2008)

“Will Blogs Kill Writing: Why I Blog”, by Andrew Sullivan (Atlantic November 2008)

And PopMatters columnist and blogger Rob Horning is often addressing this subject, as well. And … but we’re getting distracted.

IZ IT TRU? R WE UNABL 2 THNK & COMMUNIC8 N MENINGFL WYZ NE MORE?

If so, is the effect the New Media is having on the homo sapien mind bad for the species? Are we going to be incapable of reading and writing complex texts in the future? Is thorough and deep understanding of complicated ideas doomed? Really?

In a four-part section spanning June and July, PopMatters essayists are divided: some think we’re doomed to an eventual brain-sucking, Borg-like existence; others think that this is yet another step in the stairs that we delightedly skip and hop upon in the playful climb that is the evolution of the species.

Today: In “YouTube’s BudgetTravel through Space & Time – Yours & Mine”, Devin Harner hops aboard the YouTube time machine. In “24 Tweets”, Michael Dare plays humorous curmudgeon with his Twitter addiction.