Blog 8: We are the Machine. The Machine is Us

I admit I felt rather inspired by Molly's blog for this week, as I am also taking DTC 475 and have also been mulling over the similarities between the class materials. I also felt inspired by one of the videos we watched on Monday, The Machine is Us/ing Us, largely because while we've talked in class about how machines are like humans or are becoming like humans, we haven't talked so much about how humans are becoming like our machines.  

So in The Shallows, one of our DTC 475 readings, Carr talks about how information technologies mentally change us. Even as far back as the invention of writing itself our minds changed, we no longer needed to remember the massive amounts of information that an oral culture needed to -- it was just no longer necessary (Carr 56-57). Later, with the invention of the typewriter, we see how writers were affected by it, Carr offers a quote from T.S. Elliot who said that his writing changed from long fluid sentences to sentences that were short and staccato (Carr 209). 

We have continued to see this with the rise of the digital age. The main point behind The Shallows is to detail how the human brain has changed due to the internet, how we have lost some of capacity to think deeply, and instead have shifted to a brain more oriented to the multi-tasking many of us are used to on the internet, such as working with multiple tabs or programs.

I think part of the reason why the internet has seemed to especially take people by storm is just how immersive it is. As we discussed a little bit on Monday, advanced programming has made it so that the average user doesn't have to deal with code in order to post information, it seems to flow almost instantaneously. Typing a blog post for the world to see takes less time, effort, and money than, say, sending a telegraph.

An idea I was toying with for the midterm though, is the idea of will information technologies become even more immersive, to the point where posting information could be almost literally as fluid as thought? Will we reach a point where humans and information technologies are not separate entities, but almost combined into one? Perhaps you only need to think to post content? Or perhaps mouse control works by a device that tracks your eye paths? I decided against the idea for my midterm project since I don't see this happening in eight years, but it's something I could see something like it happening maybe even as soon as fifteen years. It would be interesting, as it would quite revolutionize how we currently consider our relationship with technology.  

What would this idea mean in regards to information though? In my midterm I talked about a defining moment where we need to decide how we handle information -- a technology like what I speak of might help provoke that moment, if it hasn't already happened. I say that because I think those technologies may increase our current problems of not knowing how to deal with the amount of information sharing and reproduction, if the problem hasn't already been solved by then. Such a fluid technology might make it even more difficult to control what users can and cannot access, and browsing and posting remixed information would ideally grow even easier. Perhaps it would be the final straw for current copyright holders, to either attempt to put a stop to the ease of accessing/reproducing information, or else to give up and let information remixers do what they want to a certain degree.  

Overall, it seems that information technologies are growing ever more immersive. It will be interesting to see what this immersion will cause us to reconsider -- whether it be psychology, copyright, or information itself.