Even though we have come across the idea of information flows between man and machine before, the term ‘cognisphere’ (as quoted in Hayles’ paper) presented it from a different angle for me, and was helpful for me to visualise. It brings it alive and ties everything together- comprised of anything that can process or carry information, and of course the main info carriers/processors are machines. She then highlights some of the (more subtle) changes that the cognisphere is bringing about- e.g. shifts in reading practises from deep attention to hyper attention, distributed cognition, dispersed sense of self. I wonder if there are different levels of hyper attention, and any advantages/disadvantages? I’ve mentioned before about my problem reading from a computer screen- I can’t concentrate as much as something paper-based. As a result I have turned into a headline reader- dozens of snippits of info every day- like Twitter in a way- so compared to my pre-internet self, I now know a little about a lot more, so maybe have a broader range of data from which I can cherry-pick what interests me and then delve into that. But the depth of knowledge I have about a number of topics is less as a result of my hyper-attention- is it rewiring my brain in any way, does it affect other cognitive processes? (still haven’t forked out on a Kindle- it might turn things around).
Another powerful idea from this paper for me was the simple phrase ‘what we make and what we think co-evolve together’. Over the last couple of weeks the dystopic view of the internet/technology has been on my mind again. I posted some thoughts here on Sarah’s blog as she made a comment about who will protect those who aren’t able to protect themselves in an online/ networked environment. By default, Nakamuras’(Cyberrace paper) phrase ‘digital promiscuity’ seems to the norm (for younger users at least) for online behaviour. I just wonder how this will develop over the next while as we have the ability to create our virtual identities (I like Nakamura’s comparison of our online identity to a program in perpetual beta release), but kids are especially vulnerable as the notion of an online identity itself is still in its early stages, so adults still don’t have a behavioural ‘model’ or code of practise with which to instruct them.
I came across an interesting article in The Age today (which I can’t seem to find in the online edition) regarding young people, politics and social networking. It expressed concern that today’s youth won’t be prepared to lead Australia in the future, not apparently being as conscientious we would like them to be, instead they are swayed with the idea of fame and spending time being ‘idle’ with activities such as Facebook and Twitter online. Can’t remember the statistic, but political party memberships for young people are at about a fifth of what they used to be, and political knowledge/awareness is extremely low for people in their twenties and probably won’t grow as they age. But then it highlighted the fact that young people are actually leveraging social networks to rally together with speed when something affects them directly, so action is more issue-based and personal, and can in some cases bypass the political middleman. So this shows again maybe the net gens’ thinking evolving with technology, and a shift in the order of the way things operate.
Nakamura also mentions something we discussed a little at the start of this course- the way technology can marginalise people and create poverty- she says that the net had an early claim to transform and eliminate both race and labour. But digital communication technologies have ‘racialised’ labour in a way, with poorer countries being exploited for support desks, through a knock-on effect of internet economic activity, or the dumping of old hardware in these countries and subsequent scavenging for any precious materials.
It was also in the news this week that McAfee have warned of the reality of cyber-terrorism in the future. So far the internet has been getting increasingly popular, if something like this happens apart from the obvious clamp down on security, it might also force us to re-assess our dependence on it, which also makes us extremely vulnerable. It might take something like this to take us to Activity 2.0.
