Extremely long, but
1) that's kind of the point, and
2) it's extremely interesting.
( a very interesting article about the human brain )Discussion: First of all, I think because I'm so stupidly paranoid sometimes, I love dystopian stories. I would really like to write one one day. I had an idea, it's sitting in a folder on my computer, but the problem is that it's more for the technology involved on a cool level, rather than the dystopian issues. Basically like distilling Star Wars down to lightsabers. Cool, but you don't get any story. Someday hopefully I'll have a good idea though.
Now, to the actual article. (I have two post-its full of notes I made about the article, but I'm sure I am missing a few because I wrote them as I skimmed it a second time.) I've noticed this myself, and in fact I think I may have even blogged about it before. Probably talking about internet addiction and stuff. I know that I am a whore for information. Seriously, trivia, knowledge, you name it. I've pretty much always wanted to be in school, just at my own pace. I think, for the rest of my life, I will always be taking some sort of class. I enjoy learning new techniques and gaining new skills and having information stored away at the back of my brain. The problem is, you forget it over time... But that's not my point, I'm getting a bit tangential. The point is, I've noticed I find it harder to read books. Unless it's extremely compelling, I will stop and think a few pages/chapters in, but my eyes keep moving, which is annoying because then you have to go and read a whole page over again. I've always had that quality, that I will think, almost anywhere. My best friend in gradeschool used to tease me about it all the time, because sometimes I would stop talking to her in a car ride or something and just be staring out the window, thinking. I used to get people asking me if I was okay, yeah, I'm fine, I'm just staring out the window looking at things and thinking about them... But I have noticed that after a little bit I lose interest in the book, it just becomes words on the page. More than just stopping and thinking (or getting easily distracted, like many books you have to read for school, oh, let's say, Wuthering Heights [BLECH]), but completely losing interest. Almost as if your eyes lose focus because you've been reading too long, but it's coming from your brain instead. The words on the page just become mush. It's so frustrating.
Sometime last year, I can't remember if it was before drum corps or after fall semester, I told myself that this year would be a big change for me. I was going to Hawaii to get in some relaxation, some adventure, figure out what in my life is not going right. There are a lot of small things, I suppose, but I think the main thing I noticed is that I've lost my self-limitation. I used to be able to just come home, do what I had to do, and then I could do what I wanted. Part of it was that gradeschool was too easy in some ways, and not interesting in many others, and when I got to high school I cared less about classes because I cared more about friends. Same with college, and especially because I told myself I'm doing engineering because I
can, not because it's my main interest. I just want to have the skillset. Which only leads to more procrastination. But the issue here is that I needed to sit myself down and say, no, you have to start caring about stupid things again, they aren't going to work themselves out. I need to manage my time online. I need to exercise more. I need to make an effort getting out to meet people. I need to be ME and not lose myself in inane things. I don't even know
where I lost myself, but somewhere toward the end of high school and the beginning of college, I did. I focused too much on what other people wanted me to be, so much the adult because I know, and they know, that I can handle the responsibility-- but I can't forget that I am so much a child's imagination. I daydream, I sketch, I have too many ideas and aspirations. I'm too hopeful in humanity, probably. But I've always felt that way, and I think I tried to crush it. It seems like all throughout gradeschool I was one of the most mature kids in my class, though I always felt frustrated by the fact that I had no real knowledge/understanding/interest in current events, other than scientific. In that sense I think I definitely matured, though it pretty much took me all throughout high school. But I can definitely at least better understand some politics and things, or at least I have more of an interest in them. Something about them is still not there for me to grasp. Anyway, the point is that I have a need to create and a need to let my imagination go and a need to be a dork. I can't sacrifice that for anything. Maybe I'm not going to play with all my toys but it doesn't make it any less fun having them. Laura was looking at me ridiculously for buying so many of the Indiana Jones 3 3/4" figures, but as soon as I pulled them out of the box to show her she started messing with the accessories and the boxes and we actually spent a little while setting them up and trying to keep Spalko's pistol from getting eaten by Jack.
And now I am extremely far off topic. Back to my post-its.
Artificial intelligence scares the SHIT out of me. Not in the sense that computers will take over and we'll become a biology to be exploited or killed, but rather in the sense that humans will become nothing more than advanced technology, modifying ourselves until we lose every element of humanity... and yeah, I know that deep down poetically it's emotion, but it scares me that people want to genetically CHOOSE what their kids will be, not just male or female but eye color and hair color and intelligence and skills and strength, and that those are things that would eventually become outdated as they are upgraded, and soon you have
outdated children. Who could treat
a person like that? Another human being? This is ignorance. (This is Sparta! Oh wait. No, it's just ignorance. Maybe politics. But it's madness, too.)
And maybe genetic modification everyone decides is unethical. (Though there would probably still be someone out there experimenting... the law isn't perfect) So what if people can put chips into their brain to remember things? Yeah, I remember reading a kids magazine wishing you could just do that so you wouldn't have to go to school. Convenient, but what if your computer broke, or was programmed badly? Or you crashed in a forest and a moose trampled on you and broke the circuit? Then where would you be? And it also leads to the ego that you think you know something, but really, you don't. This is another thing I've had to find out about myself recently. Gradeschool was too easy and not interesting, and it's easy to delude yourself about teachers and books and things if you're obsessive about good grades, but starting senior year and going 'til now I've been able to admit to myself a few things. Grades aren't as important as they seem, because you should get out and live. That being said, they're very convenient for scholarships and things, and I will probably be kicked out of the honors program. Which upset me, but after a while being bitter I realized there really aren't any benefits anyway, other than being able to check out 100 books from the library at a time. (If I'm still in, I'm going to do it. If not, I'm stealing Candice's card to do it.) Oh, and I won't graduate Summa Cum Laude (I think?), but... does that really matter? Besides grades, I had to learn that I'm not as much of a genius as I wished I was. There are things I don't understand, and probably my mewest revelation is that you can't just learn them for a semester, for a test. You're not really learning anything, and I'm starting to feel those effects. You have discussions with your friends and realize that even though you studied and at one point knew what they are talking about, you can't recall as much of it as you'd like. (Then again, maybe I'm too obsessive and I just want to remember it all. Who knows.)
Can't remember if I already mentioned this a few paragraphs up, but I'm just going down the post-its now. Staying in school... I think I will be always taking classes, about something. Literature, history, art, you name it. And because classes in school are so focused, I'm always reading. Used to be magazines and books, now mostly internet. I have acess to learning so many things I may never need to know directly, but what if them one day applies to a creative engineering solution or a writing idea or an art idea? That's how my brain works, I have millions of stupid little things floating around, and somehow they will crash into eachother and I'll have an idea. In order to be creative I know I have to feed my brain, but I've also learned if I'm feeding it I need to be creative.
Something else I think I've touched on before, and I think about at least once a week if not once a day; age and technology. I wonder how a generation that's grown up understanding computers will adjust to technology as they get older, as older generations fall behind (and older technology falls behind, and the things that go with it: media, politics... sadly). I wonder how technology's going to change...
Now, malleability of the brain, that's interesting. It's both good and bad. Bad in that my brain is becoming more rapid-fire and I lose focus reading books. Not good at all. Good in that it means you can teach an old dog new tricks... Definitely one of my fears. That I will stop learning, that I will get stupid with age (yeah, not just fear of dying here AUGH), that I will lose ability to do things as I get old. Not that I feel old now, though I think people expect me to say that because OHMYGODI'MTWENTY (well, not yet, technically). Like I've said before, I'm too much a child's mind and I don't want to not learn things, not be able to go on adventures. (At least, it's self-encouragement to get in shape. So when I in my eighties I can still run.)
Internet is not the only thing that messes with my brain. I cannot listen to music when I study, or really when I do anything that is not expressly listening to music. Maybe it's because I was so much raised on music that it's like my sixth sense, tempo and tuning and listening and feeling it. For a while I just tried studying to music without words, because I figured it was that language is so important to us that it would be what distracts us, but it's not true for me, it's definitely any sort of music. That being said, I just had the remembrance that a common "science fair" in grade school was to see who took a test better, those who listened to music while studying, and those who didn't, and that those who listened to (I think classical) did better. I am not sure that would work for me, though I think the science behind it is that the music stimulates more of your brain to get it active and remembering. Only problem for me is that I guess it is too active. Maybe it's just that my brain is turning into an internet-brain and I lose focus on studying, but really music should help... who knows.
I've also noticed my mental to-do list skills breaking down. Now whether that was that I have so much more to keep track of now, not just do your homework do your chores work on a craft project and go to bed, but do your homework go to work remember what to wear and then go to the bank and then go to walmart (with a whole separate mental list) and then go home to meet laura and pack (yet another list) and then clean the house so people can come over at x time and then go on vacation... remains to be seen. Or maybe that I now purposefully carry around a notebook and pen at all times, and write down project ideas and things I need to do, and I rely more on that... But I almost always forget to go back and check it. Right now my desk is COVERED in post-it notes and the notepad function on my phone is full. For a while I tried a method of keeping "A, B, C, D" level lists on my desktop in Word, but that was forgotten quickly because it requires upkeep. So... I don't know.
Another topic dealing with age and technology: how people watch movies. When you are younger, everything is entertaining, and when you are older you start watching stuff made more for the story and the thoughtfulness and the emotion and stuff. And if you're trained in certain technical areas, I'm noting more nowadays that you watch the costumes or the acting or the way the camera pans or the editing or the CGI. I'm not convinced it's because a lot of my friends have interest or training in that, though I'm sure that's part of it. I think part of the issue is that it's popular (popular? I don't know) to be a cynic, to think you're an expert, to watch it not for entertainment but on a meta-level to guess it's predictability and it's qualities that I think ten years ago only a professional (or indie) movie maker would have cared about. Maybe it's part youtube, maybe it's the addition of behind-the-scenes special features on almost all DVDs (and I swear to god if they don't start putting more special features on the Indy dvds I will kill someone), who knows. Maybe it's all of that.
You know what word never ceases to distract me from the quality of the writing? "Gewgaws." PLEASE STOP USING THIS WORD, PEOPLE, I am begging you
Part of me has always wanted simplicity. Not quite being a hermit but living in a small house being able to take care of all my stuff and growing my own food (or catching/killing my own food, whatever) and being able to manage everything myself. Part of it is that machines are becoming too complicated, it requires a LOT of skill to be able to fix cars now. Part of it is my concern for the environment, that owning little and having a small footprint is best. Part of it is that man is turning into machine... a corporate machine, maybe, but a machine nonetheless. Buy the clothes buy the ipod buy the phone buy the car buy the gas buy the fancy restaurants buy the (COMPLETELY BULLSHIT MARKET) diamonds. I think, in a small-market system, captialism is good. Maybe I'm just too much of a gloom-and-doom worry wart, but I'm really afraid for where we, as a society, are headed. Environment, politics, corporations... Ugh. Maybe just another reason to want to get away from it all...
Plus, I've always thought survivalist skills are cool. (AND ENVIRONMENTAL HOUSE DESIGN! Awesome) I'd love to see anyone from Hollywood survive in a forest for a week. I know my plants recognition skills aren't all that great, but I don't think I'd do too badly. Shelter, water, I am there. Fire in theory. Trapping animals a bit more of a challenge.
(WOO, one post-it down!)
Back to my dystopia thing for a second-- you know what would be interesting? A current-day dystopia novel. Something that would happen tomorrow. I think partially because technology moves at an exponential rate, that it would both have to be as well as make it more interesting. (Only thing is that it would go out of date probably very quickly...) Hmm. I'll have to think on this some more.
Another concern of having a mind that moves too quickly: ADD diagnoses. They're already way too high, and way overmedicated, but being raised on the internet might only make that worse.
Maybe I am just a bit old-fashioned, wanting to avoid having a brain that moves too quickly, but in the same manner I hate having downloaded-only music and movies. I'd rather own the dvd and the cds. I think it's still too easy for files to corrupt, for computers to crash or get broken, and there are all the stupid limits like iTunes "you can only download this file to five computers!" I know it's so they make more money, but, UGH, I'm not going to get into a political rant about how I think this (almost)depression is good for most Americans... Also, I almost always have music playing in my head. You think I'm kidding... I'm not. The only time I don't consciously hear it is if I'm thinking particularly hard about something interesting.
Also, scary that we are losing our ability to focus long-term... I already think it's scary we used to have much more impressive memory skills, but lost that with the invention of the printing press. Maybe it's just that I am too insecure and always afraid I will need to remember something I have forgotten, or that I hate egotism so much and there are so many people who think they're really smart but really know nothing. I don't know. Also, I think losing the ability to focus on something for a long time will just accentuate the aspect of immaturity that you don't think outside of your immediate actions, the whole monkeysphere theory. Truly fascinating stuff.
(My next thought was, this sounds like something I read the other day that sounded like it could have come from Douglas Adams [I don't remember what it was, but it involved discussion of "it's a small world" and that it's all an act that there are only 500 people besides you {which isn't true, I have over 500 people friended on facebook, all but a handful I actually know in person}, but in reality it's just that there are many smaller circles of about 500 people... maybe it was Neil Gaiman?]. And then, it's interesting how British humor always has an interesting take on something, like they sat back to get a bit more perspective than you, and I love that. But then that also relates to this discussion, what if it's just their being a bit more old-fashioned? Almost like the metaphorical US as a pre-teen and Britain being in it's late 20's saying there-there, I told you so, in a mocking but not annoying manner. Which makes me wonder, what if the British have got it right all this time...) (I dunno, I do kind of think I could easily live there. Reading Adams, he's said that Brits are much more sensible and that atheism and agnosticism is not looked down upon as badly as it is in the US. BY THE WAY,
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. I can't see the video, but from the quotes that sounds ATROCIOUS. Just makes me more frustrated for that whole campaign by scientists to get more discussion of technology and global warming and important topics into legislature... ARGH)
Um, and back to the Epic Memory thing real fast (termed because I remember that people used to memorize the Odyssey and the Iliad), most memorization today is just rote. You do it until it becomes an instinct, not necessarily putting the thinking behind it, and I think that was an issue for me for learning some things. Or rather, testing on them. You can't teach a method of study of rote memorization and then expect it to be APPLIED. Argh.
Oh, and I think I may have actually lost a lot of my skill telling jokes. Laura and I used to be able to go on forever, back and forth from one joke to the next. I think part of that is that as you get older you find other things to entertain yourself with, and that I've stopped reading jokes as much, and I know I haven't listened to the Dr. Laura Thanksgiving Day joke show in a while, and I don't even know if she doesn't anymore. (Still annoyed that the one year we got through, LAURA STOLE MY JOKE ...yeah, I can hold grudges like nobody's business)
Interesting that the author of the article talks about pancake people. I think that's definitely true, and kind of goes back to my idea that perhaps capitalism on a more personal level is better. Mom and Pop stores and people actually learning trades if they have no interest in school, and a car I can fix myself... But that's back to politics again, I'd rather not go there. Only thing is, I don't know if I'm a product of society in that way, or if it's just my personality, but I've always been sort of a take-interest-in-everything want-to-be-a-renaissance-man sort. I tend to think it's me and not society, as this is still relatively new in regards to the internet raising people, and I am a bit extreme and all-over-the-board in my interests.
Now, back to something off topic but relating to my dystopia interest. I have almost always read books for entertainment rather than education (though a lot of educational stuff was entertaining to me...), and my dad and I have always thought that you should be able to look at a book as entertainment and not have to analyze it for themes and symbolism and metaphors. But I also wonder, it can be very interesting to have that secondary level, if you study it. I've always wanted to write a book and just say "there's no lesson here, it's just supposed to be fun", but I don't know if I could anymore. I mean, I think I
could, but it wouldn't be as interesting as something with more significance. (But when I try to write significance with metaphors, I go a bit crazy, and that's another issue.) Are there are stories just pure entertainment with no lesson, though? Star Wars? I mean, I love the hell out of Indiana Jones, but I'm pretty sure the basis is to be responsible for what is right, there, and have a sense of mystery and awe. Terminator? I mean is there some Kubrickesque dystopian message there? I have no idea (I've only seen it once).
Ideally, my writing style is like Hitchhiker's Guide or Neil Gaiman or Diana Wynne Jones, all of which I consider to be entertainment primarily. (However, American Gods has a deeper meaning for me, which is slightly off topic.) Are there any messages in Hitchhiker's Guide? I don't really think so, other than, stop taking it all so seriously because it doesn't really matter (which, while sometimes good, also worries me). My only problem is that it takes quite a lot of work to get me in that mood, and it's difficult to keep. Like I said, I think I'm too much of a renaissance man. I would write a book in that style and never be able to write another one like that again, but I would easily move on to another idea another genre another style. I could act if I had the chance, I would sing if I had the chance, I would be an architect or an Imagineer. Who knows, really...
(Incidentally, 2001 was a movie I felt they could have cut the beginning and the end off of and had a decent movie. I guess I'll have to watch it again with the right metaperspective. Damn me for expecting entertainment...?)
[EDIT] Also, I wonder if my newfound semi-carsickness (I can no longer read in the car... extremely disheartening for me) relates at all to this. Truly.
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