Going Native?

CNN reports that the battle is over, and that the digital natives have won over the immigrants.

Which is to say that if you remember a time when you grabbed a piece of paper, put a black oily sheet of flimsier paper under it, then put another sheet under that and inserted around a roller—you’re an immigrant. If you cannot imagine creating a document without the program Word, you are a native.

A simpler test presented itself a few months ago. I learned to type on—well, a typewriter. What else would I have used? And so I continued to insert two spaces after a period.

That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?

Wrong.

Anybody learning keyboarding now knows that it’s one space, not two. And if you do do two spaces after terminal punctuation, a couple things will happen:

• the formatting will be completely screwed up if you publish electronically
• publishing houses may not accept your manuscript

It takes a lot of time—in a 250 page manuscript—to painstakingly delete spaces….

OK—so there are people out there whose experience of the world is solely digital. Is it a bad thing?

I think so.

Percy Tannenbaum of the University of California at Berkeley has written: “Among life’s more embarrassing moments have been countless occasions when I am engaged in conversation in a room while a TV set is on, and I cannot for the life of me stop from periodically glancing over to the screen. This occurs not only during dull conversations but during reasonably interesting ones just as well.”

That’s from an article in Scientific American titled “Television Addiction is no Mere Metaphor.” Who doesn’t know the feeling? You’re in somebody’s house, and there’s the TV, to which they are oblivious. You are fighting the urge to go and turn it off, considering the possibility of asking your host to turn it off, and watching helplessly and—you hope—surreptiously.

“Your blood pressure is a little high,” my doctor once said.

“Well, I’ve just seen three rapes, five murders, eight fights, and two high speed chases,” I said.

He was alarmed—where had I been?

“In your waiting room, in front of the TV….”

Which hooks you, by the way, by something called the “orienting response.” Imagine, you are in the jungle, millennia ago, hunting for food. Everything is either still or at least rhythmic—the swaying of trees, the breeze stirring the branches. Suddenly, there’s an unexpected movement—something out of place. An animal has moved, breaking a twig in the process. You turn, you shoot the arrow.

Dinner.

Great—very nice in the jungle. But in the living room?

Because TV is filled with those quick, unexpected movements. Part of the addiction is that we haven’t evolved fast enough not to be hooked by the jumping movements on the screen.

And an addiction it is. I read somewhere that even when promised a substantial amount of money—I think it was a thousand pounds—the great majority of British households could not forego telly for a year.

The article went on to say that the cathode ray tube—the CRT which was prevalent before the LCD—actually stimulates the right side of the brain. Which is, for most of us, non-linear, non-logical, more concerned with emotions than with logic.

Before I post this, I will check and—I hope—weed out typos and grammatical errors. If I printed the document, however, I am sure that I would find many errors that I had overlooked. I’m reading, or editing, with a different part of my brain.

It’s one of the reasons you explode, when the boss sends you a nasty email. Also the reason you say, “dammit, I’m not taking that shit!” and send back a more inflammatory response.

It’s the reason guys get hooked on Internet porn. And probably the reason so many smart guys—David Petraeus does come to mind—do such incredibly dumb things. He didn’t think anybody could trace his email? Of course not—he was thinking in front of a computer, not in a quiet, disconnected corner.

Saying which, I am writing on a computer. I will cruise the Internet, which allows me to tell you what CNN is saying or what the Scientific American published in 2003. I will play Sudoku and Rummikub—both on my iPad. I may well watch TV after dinner with Raf.

Further confession—I can be smug about not watching TV, or needing it much. But when the Internet is down?

Augh!

I also have taken a 40-minute walk by the sea, and heard—yes digitally—the Carmelite Vespers of Handel. I’ve slept alone in a forest. I’ve held a book.

I worry about kids who haven’t….