Anonymous asked:

Do you think a restriction on visual, technological media would be an effective way to prevent children from being "conditioned" into developing shorter attention spans? Do you see positivity in giving children access to computers or tablets for pleasure or in learning environments?

kissingerandpals answered:

I guess this is where the issue gets political, doesn’t it.

I’m inclined to believe in a sort of Pandora’s box view of history, one of technological determinism. Our world will adapt itself to our short attention span, there will be no going back. Audio-visual media have a content bias for brevity in expression, they demand an immediate emotional response from their audience, they present information through iconography and dramatics, and they present information disjointedly in a sort of “peek a boo” fashion: this happened, then this happened, then that happened, here’s a jeans commercial. If an entire culture is raised on such a medium, the cognitive biases the media develop will not be exclusively limited to that medium. We have been conditioning ourselves to favor brief, iconographic, and contextless forms of communication for decades, it’s no wonder we progressively are getting sillier and sillier by the minute. In what world is Twitter a surprise when we have been conditioned to accept 15 second commercials as normal forms of communication for decades? In what world is our tribalized political life a surprise when our primary forms of communication can only communicate symbolically, in tribal signalling messages, when our dominant forms of advertising sell us unconscious images of ourselves?

Anyway, my point is that a world which has given reign to this sort of media atmosphere can go no direction but forward. Accelerationism is inevitable. State sanctioned censorship will not reverse this process. Information incoherence is useful for the powers that be, anyways. Bread and circus has never been easier.

There is beneficial use in teaching kids responsible uses of technology and media. I can see “media literacy” being an acceptable use of having kids use computers and tablets in class. I personally think this is a crutch though and would never promote regular usage of electronic media in a class. Tablets and computers are really an entirely different level of concentration killers and conditioners, ones that deserve their own posts tbh.

Really the only option you have is to exercise proper judgement as a parent. The Luddite position is impossible, the Chinese position sucks, all you can do is get a sense of what’s healthy for you and what’s not, and do and all you can to pass that on to your child. A smart phone probably isn’t the best thing to give a kid. Using the TV as an instant babysitter isn’t a good idea. Let them use the computer but obviously make sure they aren’t going on weird fucking websites. Reading to your child if they’re young is probably beneficial for developing aural concentration. I don’t know. It’s all about judgement, I guess.

[mitigatedchaos]

I take it you disagree with my plan to quit dabbling around the edges and unlock the true power of computer-based education, then?