I just recently caught a bit of a very interesting PBS special called Digital Nation. One of its main topics was discussing the pros and cons of digital learning. Should we introduce laptops and gaming in the school environment? What about the ADD issue: the fact that multitasking is making kids almost incapable of focusing on one task for any length of time. It was very well done. Being on the verge of the digital age and still subject to the pulls of tv entertainment, I WANTED to turn it to something more entertaining (yes, tv as I hate it still has its hold on me) but thankfully was able to resist long enough to watch the rest of the show and blog about it, THAT’S how good it was.

One of the most interesting perspectives mentioned was a particular historian talking about how books had changed the ancient world. Before things were written down, poets and story tellers could quote thousands and thousands of lines of poetry verbatim because there was no other way, that’s how information got passed down, so their natural memories were far more vast. When written scrolls and chiseled stones came around, the stories of the Illiad and Odyssey were written down, then copied and copied and copied and slowly our memories became shorter and shorter because there wasn’t a need to remember it all anymore. So sure something was lost, but did we gain more value in the new transmission of information, I think all would say yes. So in this case with the digital age, we are losing more and more focus.

[sorry... got distracted by a man dressed in a dress shaking maracas on the tv]

But do the gains outweigh what we lose in our own biologies? I think we will find the answer is again yes; not only because the global communication network has brought us and will continue to brings us together in ways we haven’t yet imagined; but also because what we evolve to value as important will change along with the tools we use to transmit information to one another.

That being said, I still find it very important to turn the screens off and read a book from time to time. And that’s the latest Pulse of Our Age.