State of the Digital Nation

WELL FIRST OF ALL, I have to say I am tremendously relieved.  I have often thought that the only thing LOST was missing was an inscrutable Japanese guy trimming a bonsai tree.

The other program I watched last night managed to both not live up to, and exceed my expectations.  The Frontline doc DIGITAL NATION was excellent. And lo and behold, if you didn't manage to see it, you can watch it online at the PBS site.  And lo and behold Canadians, this means you, too.  PBS does not geoblock its broadcasts.  Thank you, public television!

I do think that the most interesting and provocative parts were the earliest ones, where correspondent Douglas Rushkoff and Producer/Director Rachel Dretzin, broke down the reality of our distracted age -- the falling critical thinking skills of even our top students, the inability to write connected coherent paragraphs -- and the revelation that studies show that multitaskers suck at multitasking, utterly.  We all can agree that the scourge of texting while driving is bad, but it's notable and interesting to see how much our digital appendages are hurting us in other ways.

The other thing that got to me was the passage on video game addiction.  Not because of the subject itself. I've seen it, it's all rather played out for me -- but because they had this whole passage where a South Korean kid was sent to camp for a couple of weeks without the computer, and admitted that (while he seemed to be having fun) he was really thinking about getting back to the games.

I think back to my own childhood and the amount of unstructured play it contained -- running around in the woods behind my house in New City, New York, or swimming or riding bikes through the neighborhood in Orlando, or climbing trees & hide & go seek in Canada -- and I can't help but feel bad for today's kids.  I was never athletic, except for a couple years when I swam in Florida.  But in addition to bumbling my way through Little League games & Soccer -- there was just a whole lot of running around without a plan.  And I still managed to watch too damn much TV.  There's an image in the Doc of Dretzin in her kitchen cooking dinner, looking out at the living room where one son is on a laptop, her husband's on another, and the two younger kids play with her Iphone -- that's just a little bit heartbreaking.

But I should have known that with Doug involved, the balance would ultimately tip positive. And the Doc does a great job of telling that side of the story, too.  Failing schools in the Bronx that have reversed falling test scores through re-imagining the role of technology, better work environments through virtual spaces, and the continuing drive for community -- which is the part of it that fascinated me all those years ago when I was on MediaTelevision.

I write these entries quick and tend not to edit them too much, so they are usually first blurt. And sometimes that means I look back on the entries like the one I did yesterday promoting this Doc and think, "mmm, did you mean to be that negative?"   And I didn't. So I'm glad that the doc is ultimately balanced about what is gained and lost in the Digital Nation.

But the point that I made regarding the Social Media Week still stands. The worst sin of those promoting new media has always been the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" evangelism that assumes too much.  Like the fact that everyone is a great multitasker or will be, going forward.  What I took from the Doc last night was that the ubiquity of new communication tech has indeed changed us -- not always for the better. But the connections and stories we crave are still rooted in the same space.  It is, as McLuhan always maintained, evolution not revolution. One media does not replace or cannibalize another.

So I don't know where Television is going or what the thing we now think of as Television will be in a few years. But the people who insist it's going to die need to take a step back and separate the hype from the research of how people respond to creativity.

One of the most interesting things I think has come out of the digital space lately is the quiet realization that the technology can't drive it alone.  As games get more complex, game companies are starting to realize that yes, they actually do need writers to come up with stuff -- the designers can't drive the bus by themselves.

And as distractions mount and defeat us all, some of us have learned to seize back the ability to concentrate on just one thing at a time.  What is the Pomodoro technique if not that?  I've just had the three most focused days of work I've had in months -- truly exhausting days. And they were defined entirely by 25 minute countdowns where I couldn't check email or be distracted in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, Digital Nation is good brain food.  Again, everybody should watch it.