PBS VIDEO: Frontline | Digital Nation (2010)
Is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained?
http://video.pbs.org/video/1402987791
It goes into detail about Virtual Reality and the consequence on psychology & society.
Digital Nation
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Zaptruder
- Cross Eyed!
- Posts: 128
- Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2012 9:28 am
Re: Digital Nation
Without viewing the video (yet) and responding primarily to the video subtitle:
As long as you have reached a saturation of leisure and freedom (that is, you have so much time and freedom on your hand to pursue whatever ends you wish), then yeah, accessing one option will deprive you of the ability to access another.
In terms of what we're losing vs what we gain...
I liken the trade-off to the same kind of trade-off we made when we invented writing. The mechanism for creating high quality rote memory was significantly weakened as the need to remember stories and information via the spoken work was significantly weakened.
But what we gained... was much more significant and allowed for a much greater degree of improvement in our lives through other compensatory mechanisms.
The web/VR world will weaken our localized community structures as it allows us to 'virtualize' our social relationships, weakening the physical interaction component. It's already happened.
But VR will help to return some of that spatial, gestural awareness back to communication and interaction that written text via emails, facebooks and forums have so keenly stripped away.
Anyway, I'll watch the video and respond to their message afterwards.
As long as you have reached a saturation of leisure and freedom (that is, you have so much time and freedom on your hand to pursue whatever ends you wish), then yeah, accessing one option will deprive you of the ability to access another.
In terms of what we're losing vs what we gain...
I liken the trade-off to the same kind of trade-off we made when we invented writing. The mechanism for creating high quality rote memory was significantly weakened as the need to remember stories and information via the spoken work was significantly weakened.
But what we gained... was much more significant and allowed for a much greater degree of improvement in our lives through other compensatory mechanisms.
The web/VR world will weaken our localized community structures as it allows us to 'virtualize' our social relationships, weakening the physical interaction component. It's already happened.
But VR will help to return some of that spatial, gestural awareness back to communication and interaction that written text via emails, facebooks and forums have so keenly stripped away.
Anyway, I'll watch the video and respond to their message afterwards.