Technology makes passive life seducing

“The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of specialized knowledge.” --Albert Einstein

Our (US) society is not generally tuned to agree with Albert’s opinion. We generally consider education is a commodity, an object of commerce; generally our schools, colleges, and universities prepare us in a specific specialty so that we can fit directly into the cogs of the industrial machine when we graduate.

The “development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment” must come after our school days are complete. If we do not begin this process of preparation for independent thinking quickly after schooling it is quite likely we will never acquire the judgment required of an independent critical thinker.

There is good reason to consider our first priority is to acquire the certificates necessary for a good job and then to focus our attention upon taking control of our life following our graduation.

There is a significant difference between life as it is typically lived and life as it could be. This difference can be lived provided one does not give into a passive role and develops an active roll in determining her or his future.

The passive learner rolls with the punches; s/he establishes habits that ‘work’, which allow him or her to ‘get by’. The passive learner seeks to integrate her or him self into the status quo.

Our technology makes a passive life seducing. The following two paragraphs are from a recent article in the Washington Post written by a reporter who had rented a car with a GPS guidance system.

Again and again, I turned off the calculated route — following my nose across country — and the G.P.S. patiently rearranged its plans. Now and then I heard it say, “Make a legal U-turn at the first opportunity,” and I wondered if I was hearing a sigh of defeat in its crisp, female voice. I set out one morning for a nearly vanished Kansas town. “You have arrived!” said the G.P.S., without irony, as we drove down the tumbleweed streets of our destination.

We fought only once, in Emporia. We were leaving the surface road and picking up the Kansas Turnpike. The instructions I heard flatly contradicted my sense of where we were, so I ignored them and found myself heading west, toward Salina, instead of northeast, toward Lawrence. It was a humbling experience. I stopped for coffee. When I started the car, the G.P.S. said, “Resume?” Not a hint of told-you-so in its voice. I said yes, and let it lead me home.

The active learner establishes habits directed at constant improvement. I think that many people become active learners directing their efforts at maximizing production and consumption. In fact I guess the American life style is ‘to be the active learner running faster and faster on the industrial tread mill’. The values ingrained in us by our culture ‘tell us’ that that is the natural way to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. But there is another way to become an active learner and that is by self-actualization through self-learning directed not at becoming a better producer and consumer but upon establishing a broader perspective, by establishing a different value system.

How does a young person who has finished their schooling develop their own value system?

How does a young person develop a sound intellectual foundation upon which to build a life?

What is a sound intellectual foundation?

How does a young person learn to ask the important questions?

How does a young person find the answers to these questions?

How does a young person become an independent thinker when the culture is constantly singing a lullaby for slumber?

This is a thread that is intrinsically about the way the benefits of technology encourage people to be lazy, idle, and deficient in their ability to think, with a firm undertone that such cases are to be avoided at all costs.

This is also a thread that Coberst has copy/pasted (from 2006 originally as nearly as I can tell) into at least 3 forums in the past 1 hour.

I find this hypocritical in the extreme, to use such a lazy and idle means of communication to decry lazy and idle means of communication.

On other forums Coberst routinely cross-posts to, I have been in discussion with various moderators and senior members and we've determined a few things.

1/ Coberst constantly posts word-for-word versions of his threads in multiple places.
2/ Coberst constantly posts word-for-word replies into his threads in multiple places.
3/ Coberst gives virtually no evidence whatsoever that he even reads the responses of others unless they happen to agree with his position.
4/ Coberst gives little to no evidence that he -ever- reads a thread he did not start himself, and certainly is not active in discussion with other people about ideas that are not his own.
5/ Coberst is so extensive in his cross-posting inattentively with no respect for his fellow forummates, that he just this evening referenced something "One reader responded" in the very thread that person had made their statement, a statement he had -already- responded to earlier in the thread.

The general consensus cannot decide whether he is some combination of bot, cross-poster using blogging software to automate his posts, or simply a pseudo-academic who enjoys the sight of his own text online but is not at all interested in actually engaging people in discourse or even considering topics that are not of his own choosing.

His identical topics are easily found using google and his thread title, but I can happily provide links to other areas where identical topics and responses are being posted.

Dear Coberst, I have nothing against posting similar questions on multiple forums.
However, I do find it a little alarming that you have posted very little unique content posted between forums, including experiential evidence which illustrates your thoughts.
Additionally, looking at the responses to your posts on various forums, it seems that you don't always communicate effectively with your target audience. You should rectify this, so that your time is used more effectively.

Marshall McLuhan “The High Priest of Pop-Culture in the mid twentieth century was the first individual to announce the existence of the ‘global village’ and to express that “we become what we behold”. McLuhan sought to understand and express the effects of technology on modern culture.

“The objective of advertising men, said McLuhan, is the manipulation, exploitation, and control of the individual. If this is true, then who, one might ask, was doing the controlling, and what was the desired effect?… The advertising companies were doing the controlling, and the desired effect was nothing loftier than selling products to unsuspecting customers.”

McLuhan was particularly interested in “Technology as Extension of the Human Body”. “An extension occurs when an individual or society makes or uses something in a way that extends the range of the human body and mind in a fashion that is new. The shovel we use for digging holes is a kind of extension of the hands and feet. The spade is similar to the cupped hand, only it is stronger, less likely to break, and capable of removing more dirt per scoop than the hand. A microscope, or telescope is a way of seeing that is an extension of the eye.”

Going further in this vein the auto is an extension of the foot. However there are negative results from all such extensions. “Amputations” represent the unintended and unreflected counterparts of such extensions.

“Every extension of mankind, especially technological extensions, have the effect of amputating or modifying some other extension… The extension of a technology like the automobile "amputates" the need for a highly developed walking culture, which in turn causes cities and countries to develop in different ways. The telephone extends the voice, but also amputates the art of penmanship gained through regular correspondence. These are a few examples, and almost everything we can think of is subject to similar observations.” “We have become people who regularly praise all extensions, and minimize all amputations. McLuhan believed that we do so at our own peril.”

“He was deeply concerned about man's willful blindness to the downside of technology, yet McLuhan was not an irrational alarmist… In his later years, and partially as a response to his critics, McLuhan developed a scientific basis for his thought around what he termed the tetrad. The tetrad allowed McLuhan to apply four laws, framed as questions, to a wide spectrum of mankind's endeavors, and thereby give us a new tool for looking at our culture.”
"What does it (the medium or technology) extend?"
"What does it make obsolete?"
"What is retrieved?"
"What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended?"

“On McLuhan's gravestone are the words "The Truth Shall Make You Free." We do not have to like or even agree with everything that McLuhan said, but we should nevertheless remember that his life was dedicated to showing men the truth about the world they live in, and the hidden consequences of the technologies he develops.”

The Internet with the accompanying Blogs and Forums might warrant enlightened consideration in view of McLuhan’s observations.

Quotes from: http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html

I agree the media turns the weak minded into clones in which thinking is impaired and being "cool" is what matters most in life.

“The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of specialized knowledge.” --Albert Einstein



But Albert did not follow his own advice. Have you seen his unkempt hair in pictures!