Digital Nation, a PBS Frontline documentary, premiered a few days back that talked about the negative affects of our nation becoming increasingly connected. Douglas Rushkoff, our usual dweeby guide into the digital frontier, posed great questions in the documentary, but missed the point entirely. As with a lot of Rushkoff’s reporting he finds the anomalies that support his theories and this piece was no different to start with. Despite Rushkoff’s style of reporting there is a lot to be pulled from the piece, particularly toward he end which I will separate from the beginning of my critiques.
He starts out talking about the negative effects of the increasing connection and looks to reports of how continuous multi-tasking (E-mail, text messaging, etc.) are causing people to lose the ability to concentrate on a single task. Our increased connectivity, specifically in students, is causing them to become poorer learners who lack that basic skills required to function in a scholastic environment.
His test subjects were a small group of MIT students who have their laptops out and are multi-tasking through all of their daily activities. He shows several that even look at two screens at once. Rushkoff argues that this increase in distraction is only leading to a dumbed down generation, one incapable of reading a 400-page novel or paying attention in class.
What Rushkoff fails to realize in this piece is that he has targeted and interviewed the anomalous chronically-distracted students that fit this mold. The generation that is growing up with these devices uses them to not just keep in touch, but also to research concepts and class subjects further than they could ever have done before. With a few simple keystrokes an Internet-connected student can find out more information on say the Liberty Bell, the signing of the Bill of Rights, or any other facet of history than their teacher could possibly know. There is a choice amongst the chronically-distracted to ignore their teachers and to let information slide by. The voracious learner will find themselves distracted, but by information and multitudes more than they could have garnered in a traditional classroom.
Many of the older generation feel that the young are incapable of paying attention amongst all these distractions. Laws banning cell phone use while driving, which have recently been proven ineffective, and suspensions from technology to enjoy the ‘real world’ are reflections of an older generation’s nervousness, unsure of this technological change. Human beings have always interpreted their world through their technology and the fear of this new digitally augmented reality, where everything is tagged and linked to a wealth of information, is overwhelming to a people that find libraries nostalgic, the hunt for data enticing.
As a person who enjoys research, I also find this move away from traditional methods of data mining disconcerting, but I also recognize the possibilities of a fully-connected generation with digital silos full of information at their fingertips. The youth may be increasingly distracted, but they choose what their distractions will be. An augmented reality could be the greatest tool to the chronically-curious. The chronically-distracted have always been and will always be distracted by something whether it be doodling or finding the Virgin Mary in the ceiling stucco. Human beings are not an idle species and no amount of digital augmentation will cause us to suddenly fall into a withering lump with a gold fish’s memory, entirely incapable of concentration or creative production.
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The documentary continues and moves into the effects of virtual worlds. The ever-popular Second Life comes into view again and Rushkoff showcases several workers that work entirely in a digital workplace. Peering into the evolving digital workplace he shows IBM’s massive office complexes that are now mostly abandoned as the majority of their workers meet on the Internet and work from home. As our world becomes more connected so do our workplaces and traditional brick-and-mortar complexes become unnecessary.
Some would say this is eerie, but Rushkoff hints at this as a blessing without ever stating it directly. As workers move toward working in their homes and leave behind those concrete industrial complexes we can start to reuse those pre-fabricated spaces to house the growing population or even reinvent them as community workspaces or creative centers instead of corporate droll.
Rushkoff continues to take a look at this evolving worker and uses it as a segue to the United States Air Force and the increase in manned drones. This is where the documentary gets most intriguing as it highlights the increasing disconnection from war by housing men in a virtual space, seven-thousand miles from the actual battlefield.
The oddness that he examines is how a man can fly a drone in Iraq one hour, Afghanistan the next, bomb a warehouse full of 400 people, and be home next to his wife and kids at the end of the day. Studies have shown that these virtual pilots actually experience post-traumatic stress syndrome and many of the psychological factors of the battlefield. So much so that the USAF has implemented a ‘wind-down’ room where after a days work the men play video games and come back to reality before heading home.
Another study highlighted shows how virtual reality, particularly in youth, has the ability to give people memories that they have actually done something. One experiment had kids swimming with whales in VR and the results showed that the majority of kids, two weeks later, actually believed that they had swam with whales. The lines between the virtual and the real world have been dropping as technological capability increases — augmented reality blending the line between virtual and real.
Rushkoff sets up this parallel well and begs the question of the modern warrior, this virtual warrior, and asks if they really need the same training that traditional soldiers do. Does the drone pilot need to do push-ups and be in shape? Does a virtual warrior even need to go through basic training if essentially they are playing a video game?
Even further you have to ask yourself whether or not a man entirely disconnected from the battlefield can appreciate and understand, without risking his own life, the preciousness of the life of the enemy? War is about survival, but at what point does it become almost wrong to have all of the cards stacked on one side of the table? If there is no risk then can men really understand what it is they are doing or respect the ideal that they are fighting for in the first place?
The virtual battlefield threatens turning war into nothing more than a video game. The modern warrior may never see a battlefield as he will be piloting a drone either on the ground or in the air. The United States Navy already wants to have unmanned ships patrolling the seas, the Air Force has its unmanned drones, and even the Army only recently canceled its robotic ground unit program. At what point does war become slaughter instead of battle? It’s an odd question to keep asking since we never want to lose one of our own, but when does technological superiority make going to war wrong?
Although the documentary continues and talks about other ideas of a virtual-centric reality the piece really ends on this point of how VR, although a brilliant technology for learning, can also create huge moral dilemmas. No man wants to risk his brother in war, but at what point does technology turn war into genocide? Without any risk is there even a reason to go to war? Can the virtual soldier eliminate war entirely since it will become pointless to kill without risk of personal loss?