Um texto interessante na Wired: uma entrevista com a autora do livro Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, mais um título, imagino, na linha do The Shallows do Nick Carr.
Idéia geral: nossa cibersociedade gerou uma “cultura da interrupção”, onde o contínuo fluxo de informações sob a forma de e-mails, SMS´s, videochamadas etc torna-se a norma, e a capacidade de concentração e de pensamento criativo vão ladeira abaixo.
Sem dúvida, esse tipo de pessimismo ressurge com o advento de qualquer nova tecnologia, e é preciso lembrar que houve gregos ilustres falando contra a escrita. Mas eu acho que as novas preocupações não são desprovidas de alguma motivação:
“Wired.com: Is there an actual scientific basis of attention?
Maggie Jackson: In the last 30 or 40 years, scientists have made inroads into understanding its underlying mechanisms and physiology. Attention is now considered an organ system. It has its own circuitry in the brain, and there are specialized networks carrying out its different forms. Each is very specific and can be traced through neuroimaging and even some genetic research.
The first type of attention is orientation — the flashlight of your mind. It involves the parietal lobe, a brain area related to sensory processing, which works with brain sections related to frontal eye fields. This is what develops in an infants’ brain, allowing them to focus on something new in their environment.
The second type of attention spans the spectrum of response states, from sleepiness to complete alertness. The third type is executive attention: planning, judgment, resolving conflicting information. The heart of this is the anterior cingulate — an ancient, tiny part of the brain that is now at the heart of our higher-order skills. It’s executive attention that lets us move us beyond our impulsive selves, to plan for the future and understand abstraction.
We are programmed to be interrupted. We get an adrenalin jolt when orienting to new stimuli: Our body actually rewards us for paying attention to the new. So in this very fast-paced world, it’s easy and tempting to always react to the new thing. But when we live in a reactive way, we minimize our capacity to pursue goals.“
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fevereiro 9, 2009 às 10:27 am
espectral
O receio é sempre o mesmo: o de que na escritura, que é dispensa e disseminação, se furte à presença o significado, o espírito ou aura do pensar. Valia entre os gregos e vale entre nós. O diálogo é o Fedro:
” Phaedrus. Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard.
Socrates. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. ”
É a velha divisão entre o que supostamente se encontra próximo do pensamento – no caso o diálogo vivo, a voz do orador respondendo às ressalvas de quem o critica – e a distância infinita proclamada pela escrita, essa metafisicamente definida enquanto derivação desafortunada do que DE FATO seria o pensamento, a razão, o espírito, etc.
Achar que o google vai nos deixar mais estúpidos é insistir nesse argumento, penso. A escrita era interrupção, é interrupção, quanto mais fragmentada se torne não deixará de ser interrupção.
A quem interessar possa:
http://books.google.com.br/books?id=m8lmHmVW12EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=dissemination+derrida#PPR5,M1
março 1, 2009 às 5:00 pm
Guilherme Lopes
Estamos vivendo numa era de novas criações e ferramentas de comunicação nunca antes vistas. E, que certamente outras mais surgirão e farão parte da imensa distribuição instantânea da informação e interação entre todos os envolvidos nos meios.
O que motiva desenvolvedores e cientistas a criarem novas tecnologias e ferramentas é exatamente essas opiniões contrárias.