Individualist-in-Chief 3 Sep. 2005

Maureen Dowd (“United States of Shame,” New York Times, 3 Sep. 2005) quotes George W. Bush in the wake of hurricane Katrina: "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." This is a curiously self-referential way to address a nation shocked by a major disaster. Dowd also alleges the Bush administration lack empathy. I am again wondering about the neural organization that makes such attitudes natural.

The genius of the market economy 17 August 2005

Today's New York Times carries an article ("A Business Built on the Trouble of Teenagers") about the boom of expensive rehabilitation programs for troubled teenagers. This is truly the genious of the market economy - it first pulverizes the brains of kids by bombarding them with temptations they cannot resist, then spins a cottage industry offering desparate parents help in remedying the problem. Psychiatry and all kinds of thereapy for grown-ups follow a similar logic. The Washington Post carries an article ("In Retail, Profiling for Profit") on the use of customers databases and new software by retailers who want to determine the true value of shoppers by assigning them to various categories and extending appropriate treatment (hint - potential big spenders and serial returners are treated differently). I am wondering if my Intro to Politics students will see any problem with this new approach. I'll find out - if I don't forget.

The best and the brightest? 14 August 2005

On "The Interview" (BBC World Service) there was - what else? - an interview with Steven Levitt, often described as the most impressive and interesting young economist in the US. He asks concrete questions about everyday decision making by individuals and claims to have proven a few curious things: that swimming pools are more dangerous to kids than guns, that car seats are not safer for kids than seat belts, etc. His most famous theory is that legalized abortion has helped reduce crime rates by decreasing the number of unwanted children, a major predictor of criminality. This theory has been criticized on empirical grounds (the availability of legalized abortion has in fact increased the number of pregnancies, so the link between abortion and unwantedness is not clear-cut), but this is beside the point. To me, what seems interesting is that this stellar economist demonstrates a syndrom paifully familiar from my own classes - the inability of most young minds/brains now to relate to broader issues and to think in abstract (particularly moral) categories. He described himself as completely apolitical, "not an agenda type of person," and seems to think that the only good social science is applied science (a year or two ago there was an article in the New York Times about the teaching of science in US high schools; it said that since kids no longer had the interest or patience to sit through lessons in basis science, they were increasingly being taught applied science - for example, forensic science). When asked about the death of their first child at one, he spoke unemotionally about how he and his wife had probably erred on the side of perseverance and had moved on to have 4 children, including two girls adopted in China (as he explained, in China baby girls left for adoption tend to have a superior genetic profile as compared to the US). There may, in fact, be a link between excessive affect inhibition/regulation and the empiricist lack of transcendence and wider concerns in someone as Levitt - otherwise, a very clever young guy, the type of productive scholar coveted by prestigeous research universities (he is at Chicago). Oh, I forgot: of course, Levitt appeared on BBC World Service as part of the promotion for his new book.

One small step for Motorola 12 August 2005

Motorola announced that it had developed a cell phone integrated into the frame of sunglasses. One small step for Motorola, one big step closer to the day when people will have communication devices implanted into their brains.

Computing is real life 11 August 2005

A summer issue of Technology Review (published by MIT) contains an article called "Social Machines." It examines what's called "continuous computing" (aka "ubiquitous computing," "ambiet computing," etc.), to the poit where computing becomes the overall framework of our daily existence. Here is a nice example: "For one-to-one communications, Mayfield says, he uses the Treo, Skype's free VoIP service, and the e-mail system built into Socialtext's own software. To conduct company meetings and client calls, he uses the conference-calling services at FreeConference.com. When he's at a convention, a hotel, or a rented meeting room, he connects the Airport to the local network, which creates his own Wi-Fi zone and gives him access to the Web, Skype, instant-messenger software, and his company's always-on IRC channel. He also advertises his whereabouts by registering his temporary Wi-Fi zone with a service called plazes and by describing on EVDB the events he's attending. He uses Movable Type and TypePad to maintain multiple blogs, including one for his employees, one for the public, and several restricted to his customers. He bookmarks interesting Web pages on Delicious and sends them out on his personal link feed, titled "Linkorama." He reads the news and follows his favorite blogs using the NetNewsWire and NewsGator RSS aggregators, which also supply him with regular podcasts. Almost daily, he uploads photos from the Treo and the camera to Flickr, where anyone can view his photo stream. He even has a dedicated wiki [amendable web page] for his family." While the author makes some nods to potential dangers, the new technological cocoon is described mostly a set of "enabling technologies" extending, like earlier technological innovations, natural human capacities. Only this time around technology seems to induce a rapid rewiring of human brains, but those emerging new brains cannot really grasp their own predicament.

The beauty of old footage 8 August 2005

On Discovery Channel I saw footage of the sinking of an Austro-Hungarian battleship on June 10 1918 by an italian torpedo boat. The crew were milling around on the deck of the huge vessel, as if in disbelief that it could soon sink. When it did, it took many seamen with it. Could this be a metaphor of our current state of mind on spaceship Earth? Somebody mentioned on TV that the Earth is losing 3 bilogical spieces every hour or so.

I uber alles 3 August 2005

Individualization seems to pose one of the deepest and most puzzling questions to the social sciences. The other night I watched a Discovery Channel documentary which offered a glimpse at some embrionic efforts in this direction. It addressed the attemp of Amenhotep, an Egyptian faraoh, to replace the old set of dieties with a single new god - the sun. Few people were ready to embrace the new faith, but still this was a rather remarkable attempt to break out of traditional norms and understandings - probably made possible by some sort of neural modification in Amenhotep's brain.

Shaken, but not quite 23 July 2005

After a series of bomb blasts in an Egyptian resort (almost 100 killed and many injured) a BBC World presenter was talking to a British policeman on vacation there. He had earlier taken part in the police operation in London after the suicide attacks there; he had been only 50 meters from one or two of the Egyptian blasts, and had seen all the carnage and mayhem they had caused. With all this in mind, the BBC presenter said something like: “You are obviously quite shaken…” The policeman confirmed, but he sounded totally in control and relaxed. What kind of brain can possibly generate such utter composure (other than the Sitting Bull’s)?

Celtic tigresses 10 July 2005

In a series of New York Times articles Thomas Friedman recently described Ireland’s rapid rise to the position of Europe’s richest country (“The End of the Rainbow,” 29 June; “Follow the Leapin’ Leprechaun,” 1 July). He attributes this economic miracle to wise public policies in the context of Ireland’s embrace of globalisation. I am wondering if he has seen the Magdalene Sisters, though. The movie describes an estranged society where everyday discipline based on general rules is enforced within the family and public institutions with utmost, almost sadistic, severity; the rules, meanwhile, are generally accepted by the victims of their enforcement. I am wondering if these cultural traits may offer a better explanation of Ireland’s success story; and whether societies lacking similar kinds of discipline and habitual submission can equally benefit from the policies Friedman describes.

3-D 6 July 2005

The New York Times carries an article (“Television that leaps off the Screen,” 3 July 2005) on the advent of 3-D TV and computer screens. They would display vivid images swirling and twitching right in your living room. As if TV and videogames in their current form are not sufficiently addictive and mind/brain-altering.

Another round of France vs. US 2July 2005

I am still thinking of that comparison between French and US culture. This time what comes to mind are a few differences between the 1973 British-French co-production The Day of the Jackal and its 1997 US remake. In the original, the Jackal is a slender, handsome guy (granted, played by a British actor) who sports a custom-made rifle holding one round of ammunition and fitting within a crutch. In the US version the Jackal is played by Bruce Willis who uses a laptop-operated remote control to target a giant machine gun or automatic cannon hidden in a mini van. Could it really have been the other way around?

France and the spirit of capitalism 1 July 2005

In one of a series of articles on Ireland’s economic miracle (“Follow the Leapin’ Leprechaun,” New York Times, 1 July 2005), Thomas Friedman argues that France and Germany will have to follow Ireland’s lead in adopting the less regulated Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism – or face economic extinction (“become museums”). This can be more easily said than done, though. Yesterday, I sat down to fill out a recommendation form for a former student. It came from a top French institute of international studies, and contained the usual list of qualifications I needed to assess. There was, however, a marked departure from the no-nonsense approach evident in similar forms issued by US institutions. The second item I had to evaluate was “culture générale” (something quire irrelevant in the US), followed by “esprit d'analyse” and “esprit de synthèse” (literally “spirit of…”). I am wondering if there might be some cultures which cannot fully adapt to the rigors of free-market capitalism, even if their members are eager to follow Friedman’s advice. In addition to France and Germany, I am thinking Japan, India, South and Southeast European countries, maybe others I am less familiar with. But – this is how the relative success of all societies and cultures is going to be judged in the future that lies ahead.

Fiction and reality 20 June 2005

Frank Rich expresses hope that Americans are becoming fed up with the massive manipulations to which they are exposed (“Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks,” New York Times, 19 June 2005). He says they are unlikely to take seriously Tom Cruise’s loud pronouncements of his love for a much younger co-star – in contrast to members of an earlier generation who in 1938 ran into the streets at Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds hoax. I truly wish Rich were right, but I have my doubts. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between different degrees of spin and degrees of removal from “reality” in all kinds of news/information sources (as made clear in Thomas de Zengotita’s brilliant article, “The Numbing of the American Mind” –Harper’s, April 2002). I am thinking, for example, of that movie starring Tom Hanks which ostensibly displayed God’s phone number (Bruce Almighty). In fact, this was the number of a radio station which received thousands of calls – many from pranksters, but some from people who really thought they could get in touch with God. Curiously, Hanna Arendt once thought that individuals who cannot distinguish fiction from reality – rather than ones who ardently embrace pernicious ideologies – are the aptest subjects of a totalitarian regime.

Dumb and dumber 28 April 2005

Science writer Steven Johnson claims watching TV (and contemporary popular culture in general) in fact make us smarter (“Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” New York Times, 24 April 2004). He claims popular TV shows achieve this feat by inducing viewers to follow numerous and complicated story lines involving dozens of characters – providing them with a mental workout. Apparently, though, TV did not make him smarter. Research suggests TV affects our brains primarily through the drug-like, quasi-hypnotic effect of short cuts and flashes on the screen – not so much through its content. The media is the message, stupid… An older (2002) Scientific American article is a more reliable guide on this crucial public health/environmental issue (“Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor”).

Infomania 26 April 2005

The April 22 issue of The Times of London contains an article (“Why Texting Harms Your IQ”) which says researchers claim the excessive use of SMS and e-mail temporarily lowers the IQ of users. I am afraid addiction to those information technologies (referred to as “infomania”) leads to permanent brain impairments – similar to the ones underlying various learning disabilities. One of the most depressing experiences for me on a Sunday morning is to walk into our neighborhood internet club and see scores of 10-12 year olds sitting transfixed before computer screens projecting fast-moving images and pulsating sounds into their brains.

The end of cultural complexity? 4 April 2005

The March 28 issue of The New Yorker contains an article on new trends in advertising (“The New Pitch” by Ken Auletta). It contains the following confession by a former president of ABC entertainment: “Anything that is complex narrative storytelling—one-hour dramas, narrative miniseries, character-driven movies for television—advertisers don’t believe there is an audience under fifty for these kinds of shows.”

Liberation theology 2.0 30 March 2005

In POS 101: Introduction to Politics we are reading and talking about the modern quest for liberty – a deeply tragic and sometimes misguided pursuit which can take strange guises. For example, today I received a piece of spam with the following subject heading: “Don’t let age determine your erection any more!” I am wondering if we are facing a future where it will be next to impossible to justify – or even contemplate – any general restrictions on individual “self-actualization.”

Hypomania

In today’s New York Times there is a curious article about “hypomania” – a condition in which individuals feel energized, in an elevated mood, eager to overcome obstacles and launch new projects all the time (some refer to this as “exuberance”), without ever experiencing the emotional crashes typical of a manic-depressive state. I am wondering whether such a neurological abnormality should be rewarded by existing socioeconomic systems at the expense of others – as it is now. Oh, some will say, but through their efforts those hypomaniacs benefit others and the larger society, don’t they (Henry Ford is cited as a typical carrier of the syndrome)? Maybe to some extent they do, but what if we have reached a stage where restlessness and innovation in some areas (like neuroscience, nanotechnology, communications and information technology, etc.) are beginning to undermine common notions of what it means to be human? Plus, in a competitive environment there will be increased pressure on individuals to become hypomanic even if they have not been neurologically wired as such through their adolescence. What if I don’t want to be in overdrive all the time? What if I don’t want to be “normal” in this new sense of the word where an artificially created neurological/mental state comes to be seen as essential to competitive success, widely accepted, and thus – normal? The consequences are obvious – I’ll be punished with decreased income, status, etc. Is that right? Can a society of hyperactive hypomaniacs (or one dominated by such types) even stop to ponder similar questions? What about all those other kinds of performance enhancement therapies we’ll be pressured (or seduced) to embrace – from stimulant drugs to neuroimplants and genetic modification? What happens to individual liberty in a socioeconomic context which rewards what a blog pundit calls “neurocompetitive advantage” – as a vehicle for increased and ceaseless productivity?