The Digitally Divided Self: Relinquishing our Awareness to the Internet. Ivo Ph.D. Quartiroli
be Challenged
When I started, computers were in transition from mainframes to PCs –a milestone in the empowerment of the individual, who could finally manage his own data, in his own time and place, and on his own computer. Floppy disks may have had very limited capacity, but we welcomed this freedom. Today PCs are more powerful than those mainframes, but we willingly give our data and computations back to Web services in the cloud.
Since the advent of computers, there has been concern about how they affect our minds. As computers spread, Sherry Turkle pointed out how they influence construction of the personal self, and Joseph Weizenbaum explored the attitudes of people working with computers. In reality, however, there are not as many people interested in those subjects as there are people chasing after the latest technological gadgets.
There are on the Net itself articles critical of the information society. Some correctly emphasize the loss of concentration through multiple mental stimuli. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr (2008) created a wave of debates. Other commentators have written about the prominence which the Net gives to the latest news, and how small chunks of information force historical context and broader implications into the shadows.
Some people express concern about Internet addiction to online auctions like eBay, to porn and cybersex, and online gaming and chats. Parents and teachers are legitimately concerned about protecting minors from information inappropriate for their age, from cyberpredators to cyberbullying.
Even though critical voices are present, it is not easy to criticize technology. In 2009, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield spoke before the House of Lords about the risk of changes in children’s brains from overuse of social networks. Bloggers and websites counterattacked with the allegation that she had no scientific proof for her “conjecture and opinions.”
This looks like a reverse inquisition. As the Church would condemn anything which wasn’t compatible with Holy Scripture, now it looks like nothing has value if it is not backed by hard scientific proof and plenty of data. With that premise, there can be no value in any inner, philosophical, or ethical quest. What’s not calculable, statistically coherent or scientifically demonstrable is categorized as mere “opinion” and far from truth. Welcome to Technopoly, as Neil Postman defined it.
Saying that “it is not scientific” or “we don’t have enough data” are typical defenses that technologically-oriented people use to counteract criticism or expressions of concern. They also take the position that the answer to any problem arising from technology lies in technology itself: more options, more speed, improved functionalities, a newer version.
We know the common slogans. “Technology and tools in themselves are neutral – it’s about how you choose to use them.” Any tool, however, has wider reverberations in both the social and inner worlds, aside from the way we use it. The mere presence of cars, for instance, reshaped the landscape and changed our connection with it, relocated people, changed the air we breathe, made people more sedentary, revised geopolitical relationships, and built a huge economy based on the powering, production and maintenance of cars and roads. Being without a car is possible but hard to manage, especially in places where public transportation is not in much demand. Yes we have choices in how we use cars: we can kill people with them or transport food to a poor community, but we cannot avoid their effect on our lives. They extend the possibilities of our legs, which grow weak through disuse. And without use, we tend to detach our attention from them. Likewise, TV extends our vision of the world beyond our neighborhood – but the very act of watching isolates us from neighbors and family.
Computers and the Internet are influencing our lives in more and more powerful ways. If cars reshaped the landscape, computers are making it useless. We can do almost anything in front of our screen without going anywhere. And then when we’re outdoors, we can experience the landscape filtered by the “augmented reality” tools of our smartphones. Computers and the Internet have also created a huge economy built on the growing desire for both gadgets and information. They influence our bodies, minds, and inner lives even more pervasively than cars.
Whether we are using the Internet for spreading racial hatred or for organizing support groups for people in trouble, we employ software tools within a certain body-mind setting in front of a screen, and we are communicating with people who share similar settings and tools. Inadvertently, we are feeding the huge Internet economy of software, telecommunication data lines, and hardware – equipment that is mostly produced in countries where labor is cheap and the environmental impact of their production is not debated. Countries that we will likely never visit.
Technology Uses Us
The process of digitization of reality translates our needs into the digital-mental arena, and creates new ones. The fairy tale that we are free to choose how we use technology hides the fact that using technology allows technology to use us. McLuhan said that, “by continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms.” We obliterate the awareness of being servomechanisms by believing that technology widens our choices, our freedom, and empowers us. Like car ads that emphasize freedom and power, showing shiny SUVs in mountains or desert – when in reality we spend hours trapped inside them, stuck in traffic.
Always busy clicking here and there, we pay no attention to how our outer and inner states are changed by technology and information. We are numbed to the loss of certain mental capacities and inner qualities which have been walled off by technology that emphasizes only the Now and the Latest, till we no longer remember how we were. This is hardly the here and now inner state described by spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, though that state is being simulated by instant gratification and release from the burden of the past and the future by following the endless stream of new information.
Technologically-oriented people themselves express legitimate concerns. On the social and political levels, many are sensitive to the implications of the digital divide, as well as privacy and the openness of software architectures – yet most of them ignore the deeper implications
Feeding the Soul with Bytes
Traveling from information- to consciousness-processing through meditation and psycho-spiritual understanding, I became aware that many technological developments are appealing because they share deep psychological and even spiritual needs with fake ones. As those primordial needs are translated onto the mental level of information, the emptied soul craves the real qualities, even as the restless mind seeks more information which can never fulfill the authentic needs of the soul. This very restlessness doesn’t allow the subtle inner qualities to penetrate our awareness.
On the psychological level, one of the appeals of the Net is that it fulfills the human need to be seen, listened to, and recognized as we are. Far from being narcissistic, recognition is essential to the development of our personality – and should be acknowledged in childhood by parents, teachers, and other role models. We can only recognize and value our innate qualities initially through the eyes of others.
When parents don’t give enough time and attention to their children (perhaps because of hard work or because they are caught in the technological loop) or when they lack the inner qualities themselves, their children’s need for mirroring is unaddressed. Technology, then, offers a second opportunity to show ourself and relate to others through social networks. What we receive, however, reflects us only on the mental level, which cannot feed our soul with the essential human qualities we need to recognize in ourself and embody.
The spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas (1986) has discriminated many essential human qualities such as Love, Compassion, Joy, Strength, Passion, Steadfastness, Perseverance, Intuition, Curiosity, and Inner Peace. Being seen by Facebook friends is not the same as assimilating the real qualities through connection with a real human being who embodies them. Since we feel an inner lack which can be filled from the outside only in a very temporary and illusory way, we become stuck in needing to be continually recognized. And the mind will try forever.
The use of technology can have direct impact on our neurophysiology as well. Research points to a stunting of the frontal lobe in teenagers