I had an "aha" moment last night while drinking margaritas with three old friends from high school (Duluth Denfeld, Class of 67). We talked about how long it had been since we'd seen each other, and how hard it is to find time to stay connected to people you care about. While Internet tools like Facebook and Twitter make it easier, we agreed that it takes a significant commitment of time and energy to learn how to use them effectively, especially if you are "technologically challenged." One of the gals at our table (I won't mention your name, Nan) confessed that she still can't operate the voice mail on her cell phone. None of us has yet figured out how to set the time on our VCRs. All of us feel intimidated, to one degree or another, by new technology.
It started me thinking about how other generations must have been equally intimidated by the new technologies of their day. Imagine seeing fire for the first time and trying to figure out how to harness it for productive use without turning yourself into a crispy critter in the process. Do you suppose some people said "It's just a fad" the first time they saw a wheel?? (Visualize it: "Me Grog. This round thing stupid.")
The 20th century arguably saw more technological changes and advances than any century preceding it in history. From the automobile to the airplane to the computer, our lives have changed so dramatically from that of our great-grandparents that they would barely recognize the world we live in today.
There's an interesting sociological implication to all of this. In ancient times (I'm talking cave days), humans began to understand that they needed the support and help of each other to survive. We learned to share our caves so that there would be more people to take care of the kids and whack the woolly mammoth for supper. It's no fun eating woolly mammoth alone.
Then, as technology enabled us to become more independent as individuals and families (free-standing houses, plows, etc.), we began to rely more on ourselves and less on the people around us. The extended families of yesterday have become almost extinct, as working people follow their careers from city to city and state to state, leaving loved ones behind. Grandparents aren't in the next room, they're across the country or in a senior high rise. Most of us barely know the names of our neighbors. (I know the people on either side of my house, but that's it.) Some sociologists theorize that losing our sense of community is partly to blame for the increase in crime, and especially in gang violence. They tell us that kids who belong to gangs do so because it gives them a sense of belonging.
Then come the computer and the internet and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn et al, and all of a sudden we are re-learning the art of connection. This isn't an accident; it's a reflection of our growing need as human beings to reconnect with other people.
Those of us who look for profound significance in every utterance we read on-line, especially on sites like Facebook and Twitter, are probably barking up the wrong tree. People belong to these on-line communities not because they have something profound to say, but because they want to share the everyday aspects of their lives with other people.
When someone like Natasha Richardson dies so suddenly, doing something as mundane as learning to ski, we realize that the little things we do every day--the things we Twitter about or discuss on Facebook--are the things that make our lives rich and beautiful and worth living. We mourn that someone has lost all that.
I looked at MSNBC's website story about Richardson's death. Dozens of comments from readers follow the story. Oh sure, there are a few knuckleheads saying stupid things like, "Who cares, she's just a celebrity." But the vast majority of people are sharing their sympathy, their condolences, expressing their sense of loss that a beautiful, talented person--a wife, a mother, a daughter--has died so tragically. They feel sad, and they want to share those feelings with others.
Remember the play "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder? My favorite scene is the one where the dead Emily speaks from the grave, saying goodbye to life. Here's what she says:
"Good-bye to clocks ticking… and Mama's sunflower. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths… and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you!"
That's what Facebook and Twitter are about--sharing the simple, awful, sad, beautiful wonderfulness of our daily lives.
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(I'm sorry for the length of this response....)
ReplyDeleteMarsha, your argument is thoughtful and well-constructed (unlike many "tweets" being sent and received at present, I'm sure). I will consider what you've said, and I will do so in an open-minded manner because of how you said it. Thank you.
I would point out, however, that one of the individuals who was a major pioneer of the internet was interviewed about a year or two ago in The Guradian regarding why he had recently stopped using the internet. His answer was, "Because most of the rest of us need not be bombarded by the random thoughts of thirteen-year-old girls. Or boys, for that matter."
Look at how you constructed your argument in this post. Look, also, at Thornton Wilder's wonderful passage that you quoted. One has points laid out in a logical, pragmatic fashion. The other celebrates the extraordinary nature of ordinary life through the use of poetic rhythm and artistic finish. Hence, they both work well. (If people "tweeted" about seemingly arbitrary things as well as Thornton Wilder wrote about them, I'd be reading "tweets" constantly.)
I use Facebook and e-mail, and I have a blog, because I find these things to be useful tools. But as a teacher, I also know what they are doing to kids' minds (and many adults' minds, as well). These things are making a jump-cutting, quick-take culture ever more so as each week goes by, and they contribute to the suggestion that the need to use argument construction skills needn't bother us so long as we can bluster and repeat rather commercial, trademarked phrases in rote manners.
Writing, speaking, critical thinking, and argument construction skills have gotten so generally shoddy of late that I recently threw my hands up in the air and removed the computers from my junior high, high school, and university classrooms. (I sometimes teach at all three levels.) Instead, we simply read actual books and had actual (eye-contact-heavy) discussions, and we composed actual responses on actual paper, which forced students to finally slow down and consider what they were writing. (I didn't wimp-out; I did these assignments, too, while sitting next to the students.)
Two months later, I announced to a few of my classes that, yes, the computers were coming back into the classroom, because they are wonderful tools. Yet I also said that they are coming back only for the purposes of doing the same thoughtful things on them that we did without them, and only once per week to start. If and when we all prove that we can handle more time on them, we'll add an extra day here and there. If not, we won't. Unlike the panic I saw in many faces when I had the computers removed, when I brought them back into the room the students seemed a bit more indifferent to them. They seemed to view them as tools, instead of as lifelines....
What, ultimately, am I saying? Well, James Joyce was once asked why he so often got away with breaking the "rules" of language, to which he replied, "Because I learned them very well to begin with, so I could break them in interesting ways, instead of in stupid ones." There is nothing wrong with random thoughts--we all have them, and we have them nearly all the time. There's everything wrong, however, with mistaking random thoughts for actual arguments. We should not be mistaking one for the other.
What I'm also saying is that I'm not worried about what the Marshas of the world do with Twitter, because they'll be just fine. I'm worried about what Twitter will do to those for whom learning the rules of argument construction, et al, is not an initial priority. In a world that has seen the internet, texting, Twitter, blogging, etc., explode and reverberate over just the past fifteen years, I think mine is a legitimate concern.
By the way, a friend recently referred to me as a backwards Luddite, to which I replied, "That may be partially true, but if so I'm an e-mailing, blogging, cell-phone-using, occasionally texting Luddite."