April 21st, 2009 by Hoopleton

Marshall McLuhan

I’ve become convinced that there exists a multi-trillion dollar, international conspiracy in the world that at this very moment is working furiously against us. Its agents include everyone from the wealthiest robber barons to the lowliest anchor on the local news. At their employ are tens-of-millions of your neighbors, as well as, actors, sports figures and all other manner of celebrity. I can only deduce that their insidious final master plan is world domination, but their immediate goal is all too simple: they want you to join Twitter.

Topping the list of things that scare me and which I don’t understand, is the “micro-blogging” site Twitter that the mass media has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that none of us should be allowed to live without.

The idea behind the site is based on the presupposition that human beings have finally reached such a state of critical stupidity that we cannot comprehend any notion disseminated through more than 140 characters. Our attention span has apparently been so corrupted that we can only consume information in tiny bites. This perhaps helps partly to explain why the media (which has been trying to manipulate information into increasingly smaller grains for years) is so overly obsessed with the idea that they’ve actually turned some local news sources into glorified Twitter ads.

One of the worst consequences of “social networking sites” such as these is that it adds fuel to the fire of vapid self-obsession that has already turned most of our fellow man into ignorant narcissistic cultists, while at the same time further draining any sort of worthwhile expression from the web. Personally, I don’t find anyone interesting enough, including myself, to have to keep up with their constant random thoughts in quick-fire succession. Sites like Twitter unfortunately trick most people into believing that they have something in their brains worth communicating, when they simply do not. Leaving most us to dwell in tiny isolated bubbles of delusion, in which we mistakenly believe that we actually matter to anyone outside of our immediate breeding circles.

In addition to this, Twitter and sites of its ilk only further exacerbate the problem which is already destroying our political and cultural dialogue, namely, the rendering of complex feelings and ideas into overly-simplified forms lacking substance or context. Our discourse is already remedial enough as it is, we really don’t need it to be even further deluded.

Interestingly enough a recent study from a neuroscience research group has discovered that instant social interaction and rapid-fire news updates are too fast for the “moral compass” of the brain to process. The study showed it takes longer to activate processing of social emotions such as admiration and compassion, which are critical for developing a sense of morality. Perhaps this could be a new Twitter tagline: we undermine your sense of morality!

Seriously speaking, it’s something worth pondering. Could Twitter and similar technologies actually be undermining the development, or altering the alignment of a moral compass?

This isn’t at all far off from what Marshall McLuhan (I can already hear some of my students laughing), the one-time famed oracle of media studies, warned might be a consequence of extension. You see, McLuhan believed that every technology is an extension of man, altering and shaping human behavior (a car would be an extension of the foot, for example). Ultimately every technology gets over-extended, or in other words, the benefits of any media are always eventually undermined by its faults. This happens with cars and planes (i.e. global warming), with television and computers (i.e. illiteracy or stifled literacy, isolation), and every other form of technology we invent to make life “better.” Then instead of simply eliminating that technology we create a new one to take its place, thus further extending ourselves. Further changing us away from our previous or original constructs (i.e. essential humanity).

In this case, as McLuhan would say, it’s not the information that is transmitted by a site like Twitter that matters, it’s the vehicle, the medium that is of importance. It is the medium that is the message. How is the use of this technology, the very existence of this medium changing or shaping human interaction and human construction?

Although McLuhan would probably not make a judgment call, I for one cannot see any benefits from such an extension.

Human interaction cannot and should not be whittled down into bite-size pieces. It not only inflames the over-obsession people have with instant, undeserved fame, while adding another layer of dependence on technology based on trivial needs (another extension), but it also isolates us further from genuine social interaction. Far too often as it is I find myself in face-to-face encounters where the other person is so consumed with their artificial networks that I might as well be meeting them in a chat room. I’ve actually met people who would rather text on their phone than have a real conversation.

I for one will never join Twitter for many of the same reasons why I despise instant messages and the iPhone brand of technologies that have been developed around them. These forms of media serve only to twist and fracture our social identities, transforming passive, indifferent, impersonal gestures into acceptable forms of close human interaction. Nearly instantly these technologies seem to develop into over-extensions and the consequences are dire. Friendship (companionship) becomes increasingly artificial and meaningless, and we become little more than micro-social junkies, constantly looking for our next unfulfilling fix.

The most vital question, the one that the mass media conspiracy has failed to ask, is what will this brand of technology ultimately lead us to become?