It seems that the internet is changing the internal structure of our brains making us more prone to surface skimming of information and less likely to do deep investigative reading. I remember back in college when the internet was far less exciting than it is now I would use it for email and not much more. Research and information came through books, magazines, and news papers. Now that has shifted dramatically and I have found my own powers of concentration affected.
The question of good and bad seems far less relevant to me than the question of useful or not useful. In an evolutionary feedback loop our brains are changing as the result of cultural developments and then culture in turn changes. Art that requires sustained viewing, think film, plays, musicals, dance, and so forth, have been shifting in style for decades towards a more visually active format.
It turns out that this evolution towards a fast visual style actually has a scientific name, 1/f. in jargon it is called pink noise. In the Wired article about how the internet is changing our brains, the analogy is given that we use the internet more like hunter-gatherers of information, following tracks and picking up little bits of information here and there. Pink noise, it turns out is more than just a formula for interesting visual effects, but can be found in “many features of our natural and artifactual surroundings. Track the pulsings of a quasar, the beatings of a heart, the flow of the tides, the bunchings and thinnings of traffic, or the gyrations of the stock market, and the data points will graph out as pink noise. Much recent evidence from reaction-time experiments suggests that we think, focus and refocus our minds, all at the speed of pink.”
Perhaps then the internet is not so much changing our minds away from a particular stage of evolution, but rather that technology has caught up with how our brains naturally think. Perhaps sustained concentration, while an interesting historical anomaly, is nothing more than that. We developed a technology, writing, which, until very recently, was forced to be linear. Now that it is non-linear, we are able to use our brains in a more natural state.
One thing I have noticed in myself is a lack of concern with memorization. Why expend a huge amount of effort memorizing facts when it can be recalled quickly through search?
As this relates to design, these new studies are quite interesting. Obviously there is a degree of sustained concentration that is necessary for lighting a show. We have a limited amount of tech time compressed into a few long days in which to work. If we are unable to concentrate for the duration of our ten out of twelves, we will never get the piece finished. But after that minimum ability, it looks like these effects are actually useful.
While stated within a pejorative context, the Wired article does mention that “[c]ertain cognitive skills are strengthened by our use of computers and the Net. These tend to involve more primitive mental functions, such as hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues.” The processing of visual cues is the meat of the lighting designer’s work. We are presented with a stage and have very little time until the next cue during which we must analyze the situation for any problems of composition, make the necessary changes, and record those changes. On a slow show we have a few minutes, but on a fast one like a musical, perhaps only a few seconds.
Combine this with the New York Times article on pink noise and a very interesting pattern emerges. The modulations in tempo which make for visually compelling work also have relatively short durations for any one visual, aural, or other piece of information. This ability to rapidly process visual cues has become built in to the very fabric of society from where we learn information through research (the internet) to where we go for relaxation from that work (film, plays, etc).
One need only compare the pacing of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical to a Michael Bey film to see that there has been a fundamental shift in how we, as a culture and a people, process information. At a more basic level, look at the simple experience of navigating the streets of a 21st century city. We have many people we must avoid bumping into, traffic signs to pay attention to, cars and other vehicles to observe, signs to look out for in order to reach our destination. All of these visual things demanding our attention have sound cues associated with them as well. Then there is advertising, the random crazy person, birds and other small animals, our own chaotic thoughts, and more. In that context, the ability to rapidly process visual and other information is not some abstract effect of a new technology per se, but a necessary skill set to survive in our contemporary world.
Aesthetics and technology change in harmonious co-evolution. While the chicken or the egg discussion might be interesting to some, I find the simultaneous unfolding of human culture to be inherently interesting. I am less interested in whether one particular effect of culture is “good” or “bad” based on value structures which presuppose a culture fundamentally different than the one we live in. What I am interested in is how we relate to the culture we find ourselves in. As artists, how deeply can we tune into the cultural frequencies flying past us and manifest works of beauty which at once reflect and transcend that world.
We are by definition a product of culture. We are written by our culture. At the same time we are free agents who may act in predictable or unpredictable ways. Those actions further change culture in one or more ways. Like a kind of cultural butterfly effect we may never know until well after the fact which actions caused a profound rupture in the flow of history. So we must strive to do our best with the tools available to us and make the world into a more perfect vision.
We may become distracted and interrupted along the way, but perhaps those breaks will give us just the pause we need to make an unexpected leap from one piece of information to another. The butterfly flaps its wings and the membrane shivers.
