From Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason
I was born in 1943 and grew up with the communications and computing technologies that dominate the 21st century world. I enjoyed most aspects of this development and would consider myself to be an advanced user. As a pro-technology observer, however, I have increasing misgivings. I have been assembling some essential ideas to understand group dynamics and consider some negative aspects of communications, computing and the internet.
Here is an exerpt from the book:
As the media world becomes more complex and more demanding the modern citizen may become more unhappy and confused. Many nice and smart people value the natural world and celebrate opportunities to reconnect with their “inner self” and nature. Carl Jung suggested: “Too much man makes a sick animal. Too much animal makes a sick man.”
News reports contain enough bad news to make any viewer despair but not enough information to understand what has really happened and what relevance events have to the viewer's own life. Clearly, more discrimination and restraint are needed in reporting news rather than less. Clearly, moral outrage does not change human behavior, but is one the innate features of the human mind. Real progress begins when we drop the moral outrage and get on with fixing whatever is broken, knowing that the job is ongoing and possibly endless.
Fortunes are made in computing, software and telecommunications. The technology evolves rapidly. Better access to information is a decisive advantage to humans who have social and economic opportunity. The progress from voice contact to data exchange to visual images via television utilized different technologies in the 20th century and merge in the 21st century in common pathways. Cable companies are competing with telephone companies and satellite companies want to replace both. Since wire-based communications depend on a flimsy infrastructure of poles and lines, wireless communications is the future of connectivity. Long distance may utilize fiber optic cables that connect cities underground but digital radio will be best for short distance communication.
The business leaders of the information age are highly competitive and believe that they are in a race. The race has only to do with business competition and profits. The world would be a better place if everyone slowed down and made more gradual transitions from one state to another. There is no race. There is nowhere to go. We are already here. Who is fooling whom?
There are some potential benefits. There are some hazards. Most internet users will have limited ability to understand how to find the best information and will default to slogans and seek entertainment. Social networking sites are popular because they are free and entertaining. The face book idea is that you can advertise yourself, acquire friends and become a friend of many others. The real effect is that the meaning of friend is deflated. Real friends are rare and need to be cherished. Virtual friend are not friends at all. There is a possibility that meaningful relationships can develop after online contact, but this is not probable. There is a risk that your personal information may be used against you.
People worry about loss of privacy but another danger is that a sicker human animal may emerge who is comfortable in virtual reality but disoriented and destructive in the real world. Nice people watching TV in their living room are already more comfortable in the virtual world of television programming and are often confused about what is really going on. Television programming ranges from the sublime to the psychotic. The sublime presentation includes intelligent exploration of the planet earth, its animals, plants and people. Science can be accessible to everyone and even the most abstruse concepts, when creatively presented, can be understood by most viewers.
News reports and much TV journalism wobbles between intelligently informative reporting and tediously banal, misleading commentary. Some TV programming is frankly demented and I worry that less discriminating viewers will take the weird stuff too seriously.
Since TV is a mass media, there is implicit understanding that half the population has an IQ below 100 and has limited knowledge and limited ability to understand complex issues. Too many programs assume that viewer is semi-literate, uneducated and 9 years old. TV journalism is inherently deceptive since many programs appear to be informative but only provide brief introductions to subjects and inadequate information for proper understanding. Bias is common if not inevitable. In the worst case, there is an intention to control consensus using the blunt tools of propaganda. The perception of an audience with limited intelligence is, to some extent, a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If you examine network TV programming closely, you find short clips lasting seconds rather than minutes. Scenes shift recklessly in a most unnatural manner. Somehow, our visual brain tracks this erratic flow with little or no complaint. The whole point of commercial television is to make your mind available to be programmed by the sponsor and to implant key messages in the viewer. The sponsors track the audience’s behavior in their sales figures and they buy more TV time when viewers obediently buy their goods.
Memes are brief messages that propagate through human populations. Products are sold by the presentation of brief images and statements that are easy to copy. Humans copy and respond to memes that have been propagated by advertising. Thus, Macdonald’s became a world-dominating fast food company by skillful marketing; the inferior quality of the food is not an impediment to success. After years of worldwide advertising, you just have to show the brand name “Coca Cola” and your sale is secure. Coke marketing is based on saturating commercial and domestic environments with coke logos. Coke drinkers pay for the advertising that programs them to drink coke.
You could argue that marketing and advertising theory and practice is all about propagating copies of slogans and symbols. A good advertisement creates brand name identification and links product, brand name with something already established as desirable, right and true. If your market is men you just have to invent a catchy name such as XCiter and then link your product with an image of a young, beautiful woman, preferably lightly clad.
Political propaganda uses the same techniques, repeating key words and short slogans until a majority of people repeat these messages to each other. After memes infect a large number of people, they reach a consensus. Once learned, a slogan will be repeated for many years, even for generations. When repeated, memes engender a reassuring feeling of group membership. You cannot explain the replication of large systems such as ideologies, religions and rules of conduct as “memes” although belief systems are often built from a collection of memes that are copied and repeated.
“Short” is a keyword when you study the propagation of memes. Short often means milliseconds. Within the duration of one second, a message can be received, a cognitive bias created, and a decision can be made. In television editing, clips are seconds long and one minute is a common duration of a commercial. Neuroscientists often demonstrate with brain monitoring that decisions are made quickly even before the information received becomes conscious. Not all decisive information becomes conscious or is available for slower evaluation through selftalk or conversation with others.
With multi-channels and 24 hours of potential programming on each satellite or cable TV channel, the format of people talking spontaneously or answering questions has emerged as time fillers. Talk and interview shows express a range of interests, attitudes and beliefs. One desirable result is that a viewer might recognize a diversity of human expression and may, hopefully, develop more tolerance for different point of view. Even when you dislike someone on TV, there is shift toward more tolerance, especially when other people model polite and rational ways of expressing disagreement.
A.O. Scott, film reviewer for the New York Times summarized his view of television programming in the 20th century:" …much of what's on television, whatever its scale or country of origin is garbage…even as disparate cultures can sample and appreciate each others stupidity, each one remains stupid in its own way, and no one's stupidity is inherently superior to anybody else's… in the global village, we are all idiots watching our reflections in a box."
I was born in 1943 and grew up with the communications and computing technologies that dominate the 21st century world. I enjoyed most aspects of this development and would consider myself to be an advanced user. As a pro-technology observer, however, I have increasing misgivings. I have been assembling some essential ideas to understand group dynamics and consider some negative aspects of communications, computing and the internet.
Here is an exerpt from the book:
As the media world becomes more complex and more demanding the modern citizen may become more unhappy and confused. Many nice and smart people value the natural world and celebrate opportunities to reconnect with their “inner self” and nature. Carl Jung suggested: “Too much man makes a sick animal. Too much animal makes a sick man.”
News reports contain enough bad news to make any viewer despair but not enough information to understand what has really happened and what relevance events have to the viewer's own life. Clearly, more discrimination and restraint are needed in reporting news rather than less. Clearly, moral outrage does not change human behavior, but is one the innate features of the human mind. Real progress begins when we drop the moral outrage and get on with fixing whatever is broken, knowing that the job is ongoing and possibly endless.
Fortunes are made in computing, software and telecommunications. The technology evolves rapidly. Better access to information is a decisive advantage to humans who have social and economic opportunity. The progress from voice contact to data exchange to visual images via television utilized different technologies in the 20th century and merge in the 21st century in common pathways. Cable companies are competing with telephone companies and satellite companies want to replace both. Since wire-based communications depend on a flimsy infrastructure of poles and lines, wireless communications is the future of connectivity. Long distance may utilize fiber optic cables that connect cities underground but digital radio will be best for short distance communication.
The business leaders of the information age are highly competitive and believe that they are in a race. The race has only to do with business competition and profits. The world would be a better place if everyone slowed down and made more gradual transitions from one state to another. There is no race. There is nowhere to go. We are already here. Who is fooling whom?
There are some potential benefits. There are some hazards. Most internet users will have limited ability to understand how to find the best information and will default to slogans and seek entertainment. Social networking sites are popular because they are free and entertaining. The face book idea is that you can advertise yourself, acquire friends and become a friend of many others. The real effect is that the meaning of friend is deflated. Real friends are rare and need to be cherished. Virtual friend are not friends at all. There is a possibility that meaningful relationships can develop after online contact, but this is not probable. There is a risk that your personal information may be used against you.
People worry about loss of privacy but another danger is that a sicker human animal may emerge who is comfortable in virtual reality but disoriented and destructive in the real world. Nice people watching TV in their living room are already more comfortable in the virtual world of television programming and are often confused about what is really going on. Television programming ranges from the sublime to the psychotic. The sublime presentation includes intelligent exploration of the planet earth, its animals, plants and people. Science can be accessible to everyone and even the most abstruse concepts, when creatively presented, can be understood by most viewers.
News reports and much TV journalism wobbles between intelligently informative reporting and tediously banal, misleading commentary. Some TV programming is frankly demented and I worry that less discriminating viewers will take the weird stuff too seriously.
Since TV is a mass media, there is implicit understanding that half the population has an IQ below 100 and has limited knowledge and limited ability to understand complex issues. Too many programs assume that viewer is semi-literate, uneducated and 9 years old. TV journalism is inherently deceptive since many programs appear to be informative but only provide brief introductions to subjects and inadequate information for proper understanding. Bias is common if not inevitable. In the worst case, there is an intention to control consensus using the blunt tools of propaganda. The perception of an audience with limited intelligence is, to some extent, a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If you examine network TV programming closely, you find short clips lasting seconds rather than minutes. Scenes shift recklessly in a most unnatural manner. Somehow, our visual brain tracks this erratic flow with little or no complaint. The whole point of commercial television is to make your mind available to be programmed by the sponsor and to implant key messages in the viewer. The sponsors track the audience’s behavior in their sales figures and they buy more TV time when viewers obediently buy their goods.
Memes are brief messages that propagate through human populations. Products are sold by the presentation of brief images and statements that are easy to copy. Humans copy and respond to memes that have been propagated by advertising. Thus, Macdonald’s became a world-dominating fast food company by skillful marketing; the inferior quality of the food is not an impediment to success. After years of worldwide advertising, you just have to show the brand name “Coca Cola” and your sale is secure. Coke marketing is based on saturating commercial and domestic environments with coke logos. Coke drinkers pay for the advertising that programs them to drink coke.
You could argue that marketing and advertising theory and practice is all about propagating copies of slogans and symbols. A good advertisement creates brand name identification and links product, brand name with something already established as desirable, right and true. If your market is men you just have to invent a catchy name such as XCiter and then link your product with an image of a young, beautiful woman, preferably lightly clad.
Political propaganda uses the same techniques, repeating key words and short slogans until a majority of people repeat these messages to each other. After memes infect a large number of people, they reach a consensus. Once learned, a slogan will be repeated for many years, even for generations. When repeated, memes engender a reassuring feeling of group membership. You cannot explain the replication of large systems such as ideologies, religions and rules of conduct as “memes” although belief systems are often built from a collection of memes that are copied and repeated.
“Short” is a keyword when you study the propagation of memes. Short often means milliseconds. Within the duration of one second, a message can be received, a cognitive bias created, and a decision can be made. In television editing, clips are seconds long and one minute is a common duration of a commercial. Neuroscientists often demonstrate with brain monitoring that decisions are made quickly even before the information received becomes conscious. Not all decisive information becomes conscious or is available for slower evaluation through selftalk or conversation with others.
With multi-channels and 24 hours of potential programming on each satellite or cable TV channel, the format of people talking spontaneously or answering questions has emerged as time fillers. Talk and interview shows express a range of interests, attitudes and beliefs. One desirable result is that a viewer might recognize a diversity of human expression and may, hopefully, develop more tolerance for different point of view. Even when you dislike someone on TV, there is shift toward more tolerance, especially when other people model polite and rational ways of expressing disagreement.
A.O. Scott, film reviewer for the New York Times summarized his view of television programming in the 20th century:" …much of what's on television, whatever its scale or country of origin is garbage…even as disparate cultures can sample and appreciate each others stupidity, each one remains stupid in its own way, and no one's stupidity is inherently superior to anybody else's… in the global village, we are all idiots watching our reflections in a box."