Assignment #5: Select a quotation from chapter 16 or 17 to respond to, type it out (and put the page number), and then respond to it.  It’s a tricky assignment, as I think you will discover, but let me make it trickier yet: try to find a quotation that relates in some way to our tech turnoff experiment.  If you can’t quite find a good quotation for that, just pick something worth considering and then give us your all on it.  Okay, go for it.

PS.  Be smart tomorrow night.  Nothing stupid.  Nothing unsafe.

Assignment #6 will be posted tomorrow, but you don’t have to respond to it until Sunday night.

Is it just me, or do you guys also hear and see stories, articles, examples of human behavior that seem specifically connected to this tech turnoff and to Brave New World.  For instance, yesterday, Mr. Rudolph–you know, our evil Physics teacher at Heritage, called to tell me about an article on NPR about technology and how everyone seems to think that the solution to all the problems being created by technology is to use more technology.  A week before, I heard on the BBC some article about happiness, saying that governments should measure and monitor the happiness of its citizenry.  Apparently, England is already doing something like this.  And then on Wednesday, BrandonB1 brought in an article from Time magazine about a 70-something year old who injected himself with some hormone concoction for decades in order to have and boast about the body of a twenty-something supremely fit year old.  (Brandon, don’t forget that I want a copy of that article.)  Anyone else have something like this to report?  Just on my way home today, I heard a report about a music conference where they are trying to strategize a way of dealing with the changes that have nearly destroyed the record company industry.

Think about it, but don’t forget to get your reading done: two great chapters tonight.  Here’s your assignment:

Assignment #4:  Do these technologies connect or isolate us?  It is true that, as never before, we can Skype with people on the other side of the Earth, share assignments with people in Australia, send emails to friends in Germany.  We may even create a video that will “go viral” and be seen by more people than we can even count–more people than it’s hard to imagine are actually alive all at once.  But it is also true that kids walk through hallways with ear-phones in their ears (like Mildred from F451), that people don’t even open themselves up to conversing with others because their too busy talking on their blue-tooth cell phones in airports, or paths in parks, that kids prefer video games to recess, that families often don’t talk to each other at dinner, even if they are eating at the same time in the same place.  It’s like those two guys in Wall E, who are talking to each other on screens without even knowing that they are right next to each other.  What do you guys think, more or less connected to each other?  What is a Facebook friend anyway?

For now, let’s consider that equally terrific Chapter 15, where the Deltas attack John because he is throwing their daily dose of soma out the window, exclaiming as he does that he is bringing them freedom.  Well, they obviously aren’t thanking him for it.  Ha, great scene.  OK, here’s the assignment:

Assignment #3:  What do you think?  Two questions: 1) Is John right to associate soma with incarceration?  Why or why not? And 2) Are the media I have asked you to go without for one week–just one little week–comparable to soma?  Again, why or why not?

Okay, my not-so-little Deltas–or are you Epsilons? Alphas?–whatever, come on, one day, one afternoon.  Try to go without.  See what happens.  It’s an experiment.  Or is it really like I am asking you to go without food or shelter or whatever Thoreau would call a necessary of life?  One day.  To all the rest of you who are successfully turned off, I am wondering what is changing about the way you spend your time, the way you interact with people, what people think about what you’re doing–but we’ll save all of this for a later assignment.  Good luck, all of you, and keep up the great posts.

Since time is short for me today (–funny, more often than not, these new gadgets come into the market with the advertised thought that they will be time-savers, and yet, more and more, it seems that people are out of time, impatient, disconcerted…), so let’s go straight to the assignment.  Here it is:

Assignment 2: React to this quotation from Thoreau: ”Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”  Many of you seem to be tending toward a similar conclusion in the video and in your comments.  However tempting it is to consider these words in light of the fact that they were written more than a century and half ago, don’t do it.  Just consider the quotation in regards to your own day.  Good luck.

As for me, I will have you all know, I was just crushed by my wife again in Scrabble, and that is getting old quickly.  JordanC3, you play her in Scrabble, and I’ll play your friends in pool.  No, I loved the tech turn-off again.  I didn’t pace the hallways, KerryM2, but like you, I loved readjusting my free-time habits.  I always get a lot done that I would otherwise push off, and I read more, but I still haven’t shaved…  I think I told you guys this before, but just in case you forgot:

We always imagine we will feel most like ourselves, most comfortable in our own skins, so to speak, when and only when we have accomplished our goals.  But I hasten to inform you otherwise: we feel most like ourselves when we truly believe we can achieve our goals and change our modes of being.  The trick is in truly believing you can do it, wherever you are in life.  If nothing else, I hope this experiment gave you some confidence about your ability to change your own worlds.

Having said that, here is your final assignment:

Assignment #7:

What did you learn about yourself?  About your world?  About the future and the past?  About technology?

(Some of you have wondered whether it is ironic or hypocritical for me to ask you to blog during this tech. turn-off, or to study how film works in class, and here’s my quick response: the intent of my media studies unit is not anti-technology.  To be anti-technology makes no sense, not today, not tomorrow, not on any day in all of human history, forward or backward.  But understanding how technologies work, how they shape our minds and bodies, rather than, like everyone else in your life, allowing you to unwittingly adapt yourself to them–well, that’s another matter.  Ultimately, it’s about self-power, preserving it, and strengthening it.  My longer response will form part of my lecture tomorrow…)

Anyway, how does this weekend compare to last weekend?  Easier?  Harder?  Have you already thrown in the towel?  If you have, why?  In fact, I will make that last question (which I have asked you once before) part of this next assignment.

Assignment #6:

What are you doing instead?  If you have freed up time that you usually or habitually spend watching TV, playing video games, Facebooking, texting, etc., what did you do with it instead?  Or if you habitually wear the Ipod or Mp3 earphones in hallways, or on runs, in the car, or wherever else, what do you think it was like not having them in your ears for 8 days now? Whatever you have traded in or out, do you think life would be better or worse spending your time in this, if already old-fashioned, way?  Why?

or (for those of you who threw in the towel, as they say):

If you have not successfully pulled yourself away from the specified technologies, and therefore have not experienced life without them, why couldn’t you do it?  They say old habits die hard.  Is that it? Or are you straight addicted?  Or do you think life simply cannot happen without these technologies anymore?

Tomorrow (Friday), I am going to speak to you about the message of the medium, or as McLuhan also calls it the massage of the medium–how the medium works you over, so to speak.  Without naming it, I have already been talking about it with you guys a lot, and you guys have been figuring it out on your own.  Basically, the idea is that there is a message that often goes unnoticed.  It’s not the specific content (programs, commercials, music, or whatever it is you and your friends talk about with all your text messages and Facebooks, or whatever else).  The content is important, as we have talked about already, but the message of the medium is something else: it’s the way the medium (TV, Ipod, whatever) forces you to deal with it.  That is, it makes your mind function in a certain way that eventually becomes habitual and even permanently limiting.  If, for instance, you grow up oriented around a TV screen, reading a book is going to be that much more difficult for you–that much more uncomfortable, like trying to learn a different language.  Think about ADD.  Where does it come from?  How about teen violence?  Remember the isolated ape experiment that I told you about?  It’s not what we watch–it’s that we watch, in lieu of so many other activities: the study suggest that we are becoming less and less capable of dealing with people in constructive ways.  The message of the medium is the reason all the humans in Wall-E are fat and lazy, oblivious to the actual world around them: mind and body are both adapted to the demands of their virtuality.  It’s the reason Lenina cannot bear silence, not to mention “the reservation.”  We too are trained and are training ourselves (conditioned) to need instant gratification–the technologies we use to escape boredom are the very tools that make us become bored more easily, more constantly….

Well, I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.  The reason I am bringing it up here is because understanding the message of the medium might help you answer this assignment more thoughtfully.  (Invite your parents to consider this one.)

Assignment #5:

KimL2 made me think about this: raising my children in the world of today and tomorrow.  What would you do?  I asked you if you would resist the Brave New World if you could.  Well, let’s put it to a test of sorts.  Imagine you have triplets like me (–my own little Bokanovsky group).  What limitations, if any, would you put on their technology use?  Would you do just as your parents did with you, or would you set different guidelines?  Be specific and explain your reasoning.

Assignment #4:

Nellie3 says that every age has its vices and distractions, implying that though the technologies are newer, the tendency is really about the same as it ever was.  Do you guys agree with her?  Or are things steadily getting worse–people are more distracted, more addicted, more superficial, boring and bored?  Is distraction even usurping focus, becoming so mainstream, so commonplace, that people just call it life anymore, and not even distraction?  What do you guys think?  Are we moving toward Brave New World, speedily?  Or is the reality of Brave New World the same reality we have always had, only more apparent with all these newer technologies?  Maybe I can say it better this way: Are people naturally like Lenina or are they conditioned to be like her?  Can we fault society for making Leninas and Fosters and Fannys, etc.?

Have at it young people.  And to whatever degree you are experiencing this turn-off, good work.