Teema nr 3. Effect of one of the new media components has upon its field. Or upon us?
The subject for this week’s homework is the effect that one of the new media components has on its field.
There are tons of published articles and gigabytes of text written on each of the most known areas of new media: chat rooms, social networks, blogs, wiki- effects. But all of these different New Medias have one common subject - us, humans. What is the effect of New Media on human behavior, our thinking and addictions? Therefore i decided to look at this aspect mostly in this blog post.
How our thinking is affected by new media and are we benefiting from positive effects of new media or suffering from its negative influences? And is it possible to have a balance between these two?
Obviously, this post is based on my own experiences, preferences and observations. And while i will try to be objective for the sake of brevity i will limit my post to only three most popular categories of new media alliance: Wikipedia, YouTube and Social Networks.
Positives:
Wikipedia and similar resources - Humanity, undoubtedly benefits from quick and easy access to relatively reliable source of information that Wikipedia presents for all of us with broadband internet.
But this ease of access has its own dark side, of which later.
Youtube and similar video resources
- Greatest source of background music (if you are a premium user then for 10 EUR per month you are also free from annoying ads) to help with concentration or relaxation.
- Inexhaustible resource of training and “how to..” DIY videos. From Rubic Cube assembly videos, to accordion tutorials, from RJ45 wiring videos, to cleaning heating piping systems video tutorials.
Social networks: Livejournal, Facebook etc
This is an interesting one. Both resources were excellent in the beginning to create and publish all variety of texts: from life observations influenced by current mood, to long-read articles on specific topics written by experts in own fields: from military history to oil and gas industry. Easy to filter, great control over feed. And very active discussions in the comments. And then it got worse. And worse.
Along with the “knowledge related” effect of social networks, the major positive effect is the ease of communication and establishing interpersonal relations that became possible with wide spread of social networks and mobile internet. Adding new friends whose comments you liked and agreed with, or even if disagreed, but you liked their way of making an argument. Re-uniting old friendships and school mates. We are social animals after all. Anything social we like. And of course looking at nice pictures and avatars posted online is creating a lot of interpersonal relations and relationships online which often transgress into real life. And, with all its disappointments and struggles, these romances are also often miraculously joyous and happy, inspiring and romantic.
But as one philosophy of Dialectical materialism teaches us: each phenomenon has contradictory forces and tendencies contained in itself. For our negative qualities are natural development of our positive qualities. Let us look at them.
Negative effects of New media:
Wikipedia and similar resources, such as “youtubes”, if used as an easy source of knowledge - have the positive effect of the ease of access to information, but at the same time same effect kills the motivation to remember this information. “Why work hard at remembering information when I can look for it online any second again?”
The problem with this approach lies with the fact, that without significant expense of time and energy spent on remembering certain complex concepts, our brain does not waste energy to build complex models of reality, and instead is storing only “quick preview” of it. these simplified models, without complexities, are preventing possible interactions with other models or concepts in our brain. And wit this we end up living with bunch of two-dimensional “quick previews” cartoons in our brain, instead of beautiful and magnificently complicated castles, without endless worlds of fantasy, without imagination. Only complicated models of reality interconnected with each other in our brain can create scientific progress. But without them, we end up without those beautiful worlds completely, and we do not even know what we are missing.
Social networks and their negative side
Widely known effect of social media news manipulation and connected to this the wide-spread effect of “social justice warriors” activism. Such overcompensating behavior undermines the whole idea behind protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
Less visible but, in my opinion, much more dangerous effect that social networks, especially Facebook and Instagram have - is their effect on our thinking habits and addictions.
Talented humans that work for Big tech engineered, for example, one interesting feature that is widely used in Social networks - “infinite scroll” . This feature is using human brain imperfections that are hard-wired into us biologically, to get us addicted to a series of “aha! effects”.
Aha effect - stimulates feeling of happiness thru influx of dopamine into a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens which is the same area of the brain that creates addictions from drug use. To stimulate continuous usage, and thus raise levels of user engagement and thus raise advertising revenues, Big Tech is using fallacies of imperfect biological machine that is human brain.
This is immoral and ethically abhorrent.
And quite bluntly, plainly harmful for us and our kids.
Regulators are now looking into banning at least some of these malpractices.
Can the balance be achieved, yes i think so. Thru regulation and "healthy thinking" propaganda.
As a conclusion to my small diatribe on the dangers and benefits of new media, i will go out with a age old joke:
Patient asks: Doctor, you gave me an advice to drink more water, but when should I drink it? Before or after reading my Facebook newsfeed?
Doctor answers: Instead of it.
There are tons of published articles and gigabytes of text written on each of the most known areas of new media: chat rooms, social networks, blogs, wiki- effects. But all of these different New Medias have one common subject - us, humans. What is the effect of New Media on human behavior, our thinking and addictions? Therefore i decided to look at this aspect mostly in this blog post.
How our thinking is affected by new media and are we benefiting from positive effects of new media or suffering from its negative influences? And is it possible to have a balance between these two?
Obviously, this post is based on my own experiences, preferences and observations. And while i will try to be objective for the sake of brevity i will limit my post to only three most popular categories of new media alliance: Wikipedia, YouTube and Social Networks.
Positives:
Wikipedia and similar resources - Humanity, undoubtedly benefits from quick and easy access to relatively reliable source of information that Wikipedia presents for all of us with broadband internet.
But this ease of access has its own dark side, of which later.
Youtube and similar video resources
- Greatest source of background music (if you are a premium user then for 10 EUR per month you are also free from annoying ads) to help with concentration or relaxation.
- Inexhaustible resource of training and “how to..” DIY videos. From Rubic Cube assembly videos, to accordion tutorials, from RJ45 wiring videos, to cleaning heating piping systems video tutorials.
Social networks: Livejournal, Facebook etc
This is an interesting one. Both resources were excellent in the beginning to create and publish all variety of texts: from life observations influenced by current mood, to long-read articles on specific topics written by experts in own fields: from military history to oil and gas industry. Easy to filter, great control over feed. And very active discussions in the comments. And then it got worse. And worse.
Along with the “knowledge related” effect of social networks, the major positive effect is the ease of communication and establishing interpersonal relations that became possible with wide spread of social networks and mobile internet. Adding new friends whose comments you liked and agreed with, or even if disagreed, but you liked their way of making an argument. Re-uniting old friendships and school mates. We are social animals after all. Anything social we like. And of course looking at nice pictures and avatars posted online is creating a lot of interpersonal relations and relationships online which often transgress into real life. And, with all its disappointments and struggles, these romances are also often miraculously joyous and happy, inspiring and romantic.
But as one philosophy of Dialectical materialism teaches us: each phenomenon has contradictory forces and tendencies contained in itself. For our negative qualities are natural development of our positive qualities. Let us look at them.
Negative effects of New media:
Wikipedia and similar resources, such as “youtubes”, if used as an easy source of knowledge - have the positive effect of the ease of access to information, but at the same time same effect kills the motivation to remember this information. “Why work hard at remembering information when I can look for it online any second again?”
The problem with this approach lies with the fact, that without significant expense of time and energy spent on remembering certain complex concepts, our brain does not waste energy to build complex models of reality, and instead is storing only “quick preview” of it. these simplified models, without complexities, are preventing possible interactions with other models or concepts in our brain. And wit this we end up living with bunch of two-dimensional “quick previews” cartoons in our brain, instead of beautiful and magnificently complicated castles, without endless worlds of fantasy, without imagination. Only complicated models of reality interconnected with each other in our brain can create scientific progress. But without them, we end up without those beautiful worlds completely, and we do not even know what we are missing.
Social networks and their negative side
Widely known effect of social media news manipulation and connected to this the wide-spread effect of “social justice warriors” activism. Such overcompensating behavior undermines the whole idea behind protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
Less visible but, in my opinion, much more dangerous effect that social networks, especially Facebook and Instagram have - is their effect on our thinking habits and addictions.
Talented humans that work for Big tech engineered, for example, one interesting feature that is widely used in Social networks - “infinite scroll” . This feature is using human brain imperfections that are hard-wired into us biologically, to get us addicted to a series of “aha! effects”.
Aha effect - stimulates feeling of happiness thru influx of dopamine into a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens which is the same area of the brain that creates addictions from drug use. To stimulate continuous usage, and thus raise levels of user engagement and thus raise advertising revenues, Big Tech is using fallacies of imperfect biological machine that is human brain.
This is immoral and ethically abhorrent.
And quite bluntly, plainly harmful for us and our kids.
Regulators are now looking into banning at least some of these malpractices.
Can the balance be achieved, yes i think so. Thru regulation and "healthy thinking" propaganda.
As a conclusion to my small diatribe on the dangers and benefits of new media, i will go out with a age old joke:
Patient asks: Doctor, you gave me an advice to drink more water, but when should I drink it? Before or after reading my Facebook newsfeed?
Doctor answers: Instead of it.
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