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Google Gives Many a Sense of Special Powers

12/6/2013

1 Comment

 
If anyone doubts there are signs of a living myth emerging from the culture in which we live today, all they need do is read some of scientific research and works by other leading writers and academics. The current literature on technology and culture is bursting with references about the various ways in which the Internet is affecting our consciousness. And as the pre-eminent  myth expert Joseph Campbell pointed out, one hallmark of a living myth, something that “hits you where it counts,” involves the transformation of consciousness in one way or another, depending on the time and circumstances in which the myth develops. Today, with technology permeating our experience, it seems natural that it would play a part in how we express what it means to be human today.

Researchers have found that when people use Google to answer questions about trivia that others pose, they gain an
elevated sense of their own knowledge. Daniel Wegner and Adrian Ward write in this month’s Scientific American
that the speed with which the Internet instantaneously returns screen results may even lead people to consider the vast amount of information on the Internet as an extension of their own personal memories. 
 
In their study, the authors divided the participants into two groups: one group could use Google to answer trivia questions posed by testers and the other group answered the questions without access to the search engine.  To make sure that the people without access had a sense of success similar to those who did use Google, the group without access to Google was told they were correct sometimes when they in fact had not given the right answer. Even with such controls, the group that used Google maintained the illusion that their own mental capacities were stronger based on their experience. The group without access to Google did not.

The authors point out a telling irony of this information age: we have a generation of people now who think they know more than previous generations, although their habitual use of the Internet for searching for information actually indicates that they may know even less about the world around them than their forebears. As is usual with this type of pattern of generalization, unfortunately,  the authors end their article with a  highly speculative set of musings: Perhaps, they posit, people become part of the “Intermind,” as they call the blending of individual minds with the Internet.  And, liberated from the necessity of remembering mere facts, may give their minds more energy for creativity, allowing them to transcend the current limits of their memory and thought processes. Wegner and Ward conclude: “We are  simply merging the self with something greater, forming a transactive partnership not just with other humans but with an information source more powerful than any  the world has ever seen.”  This kind of leap, from factual research to speculative visionary proclamations of major changes in our psychological experience and sense of self, are becoming more and more common with otherwise well-credentialed, well-respected writers. It reflects the need to believe that these changes based on our experience of highly technologized world are fundamental and indeed mind-altering in their nature.

1 Comment
Brian
12/7/2013 02:44:10 am


I find it compelling to apply Campbell’s construct of myth in modeling emerging human reactions to both the pervasiveness of technology and ready access to information. However, I believe we should keep the emphasis on the word “emerging.”

Most if not all have experienced the changes in day-to-day living related to technology and read that such influences are responsible for everything from altered brain function to levels of empathy. However, it is rare that the underlying self-agency model of understanding human behavior is challenged.

Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 view of cyclical paradigmatic changes in science, we might view the last 50 years of technological change as creating a conflict between existing models of human self-understanding and the notions such as the “intermind.” Coming to terms with a diminished role of self-agency in understanding human behavior due to our experience with technology could be analogous to a science confronted with data that is anomalous to current theoretical predictions. My question is whether a change to understanding the human condition as one of greater interconnectedness is truly one of paradigmatic shift and the stuff of myth.

Likewise, at the level of individual change, James Protraska and Carlo DiClemente have created a model in which behavior change occurs in a series of steps that begin with a movement from “ pre-contemplative to contemplative” stages of readiness. In the precontemplative stage, the individual lacks the notion that change is either necessary or possible. It is not on the radar screen. It is only when increased knowledge creates a conflict that one adjusts one’s personal model of self to include the novel idea that change may be possible and good. Again, while most of us see that technology is an influence, I ask how many see these changes as a fundamental modification of our sense of self or consciousness?

The recent revelations that the NSA/CIA et al. have gathered massive databases of our electronic communications has led to wide spread concern that the personal data of our lives are being perused by individual human agents of the government. The image of a black-suited undercover agent reading the transcript of my Thanksgiving email to Aunt Tilly comes to mind. However, such an understanding leaves our sense of self and consciousness intact. My understanding is that this is not how such data is scrutinized. Rather, computer algorithms far beyond my understanding are applied to the vast set of data to identify patters of communication that are used to identify those who might behave in a particular fashion (e.g. explode a bomb in a public venue). The ability to discern a specific patterns of action from patterns of electronic communication that do NOT include words and intentions is a dramatic change in sense of self or consciousness at the level of a Kuhnian revolution. It is this magnitude of change that I think could qualify as a change in human myth. But, given that few understand how such data is used, I hesitate to say more than that there may be a change in human myth for our times on the horizon.

Until we move beyond these early stages of Kuhn’s revolutionary science or Prochaska and DiClemente’s initial contemplation of change, I think we would do well to see a new human myth as emerging rather than arrived.

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