Exploring Technology and Reality

Essay Number 1
COML 509 B2:  Social Dynamics of communications and Technology
Professor Alexander Kuskis, Gonzaga University

            “Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of information of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.” – Karl Marx (Marx, 2010) p 570

In the 1930s and 1940s the typical American family gathered around the “radio machines” to listen to fireside chats with President Roosevelt and were encouraged. The family unit was brought together to share the event in each other’s company. They shared the experience and their reality was changed.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the family gathered around the RCA black and white console “TV machine” and were entertained by “Uncle Milt”, or Ed Sullivan, or have the sights and sounds of the Wild West coming into the comfort of their living room.  The family unit was brought together to share the experience, and their reality was changed. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, full color added to the experience, and thanks to technological advancement, televisions became mythic to our society.  Nearly everyone had one, and eventually, many households had more than one.  The family unit became more independent, choosing to view a variety of programming far more targeted to specific ages, interests, and individual preferences.  The experience was rarely shared, and their reality was changed.

In the decades since, we have leapt toward the blossoming realm of computer-mediated communication (CMC) at break-neck speed.  Before each new technology and CMC device can be explored, understood and normalized to our consciousness, another distracts us from its study.   We haven’t the time to emotionally assimilate it into our being, nor frame it into its proper context.   The nuclear family unit can now sit in the same room and individually interact with CMC devices.  They explore separate global communities as independent actors, engage in multiple forms of entertainment, express diverse emotional intimacies and create individual, private and unrelated realities; all the while, sharing nothing with each other.  Their reality has changed.

            Philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote, “… the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it (Heidegger, 1977. p 109). ”   He implores us to grasp the breadth of the meaning of not only the technology itself, but the essence of it, what it reveals about us and the world we live in, and how our interaction with it changes the world we think we know, the history we thought we knew, and the future we hope awaits us.  Further, he warns of the dangers of so embracing technology that we lose sight of it as the means to an end, rather, allowing it to become the definition of how we exist, forgetting to question our relationship with it.

When communication technology was simpler, theorists like George Gerbner studied the societal implications of broadcast mass media.   In his media cultivation theory, Gerbner noted that television seemed to create an altered perception of reality, one that can be influenced by the tone, content and repetition of images.  Facts become negotiable to individuals consumed by the lure of the “TV machine”.  Diverse individuals become homogenous in their opinions, orientations and perspectives (Griffin, 2009).  If such changes are possible with media that are two dimensional, non-interactive and uni-directional, then what are the social and psychological impacts we can expect from living and interacting in virtual worlds where each individual is in control of all elements of their environment?   Theorist Marshall McLuhan described the digital age as one that is returning human society to “retribalization”.  He saw a global village where everyone shared membership in the tribe, bounded by the digital technology environment; connected, yet disconnected (Griffin, 2009). This retribalization may in fact be the beginning of reality defined not by the essence of humanity, but by the unquenchable thirst for gratification and immediacy further driving the objectiveness of technology to provide an Orwellian physical existence without regard to its essence.  Perhaps it is hyperbolic and alarmist to draw such conclusions. Could it be that humanity is merely reaching another milestone of self-actualization?  We may simply have not yet uncovered the modes of thought that will balance our tendencies to overindulge, or escape to a reality of our own making, unbound by physical or cultural limitations.  Linear thinking may be supplanted by a more spherical thought process which will move us closer to a higher plane of cognition and release powers within us that can simultaneously embrace contextual perceptions of multiple creations of reality.  Such reconciliation might bring us closer to the natural world that seems to be forgotten in the digital age by enhancing our appreciation for that which is not within our control.  We may, in fact, more deeply enjoy the unpredictability and random order of nature and the wonders of those parts of our world that we have no role in creating.

Only time will tell how reality will change.  We should not be fearful of the change, but we should also not fail to question it critically, and with open, unbiased exuberance.  We would be wise to ponder the words of Master Seng-Ts’an:  “Asserting that the world is real, you are blind to its deeper reality; denying that the world is real, you are blind to the selflessness of all things (Seng-Ts'an, C.E. 700).”

           

References

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Higher Education.

Heidegger, M. (1977). Martin Heidegger: The question concerning technology and other essays [
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.
Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row

Marx, L. (2010). Technology: The emergence of a hazardous concept. Technology and Culture, 51(3), 561-577. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v051/51.3.marx.html

Seng-Ts'an. (C.E. 700)The mind of absolute trust, from a literal translation by Robert F. Olson. Retrieved 11/5/2010, 2010, from http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/cmSengTsan.htm