OT: Smart Phones, Diminishing Attention Spans and the Lost Art of Reading.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

I was born without a sequential memory, which means everything I do I have to hyperfocus on, and I can't have a cell phone.

Hey Ti -

I've really enjoyed some of your postings such as the David Bowie analogy in the "CA fatality" thread.

I've never heard of this malady. How does it manifest itself? And how do cell phones play in?

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

I was born without a sequential memory, which means everything I do I have to hyperfocus on, and I can't have a cell phone.

Why does that prevent you from having a cell phone?

[marciero]

Originally Posted by joosttx

Me and the dictionary are in a agreement:

so·cial me·di·a
/ˌsōSHəl ˈmēdēə/
noun
noun: social media; plural noun: social medias
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.

Well that's one definition. My point was about what the term has come to represent, which to my mind includes something like a discussion board only in the most broadly-construed sense.

[joosttx]

Originally Posted by marciero

Well that's one definition. .

Yeah, it’s the dictionary’s definition

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by marciero

Well that's one definition.

My dictionary has this:

so·cial me·di·a
/ˌsōSHəl ˈmēdēə/
noun
noun: social media; plural noun: social medias
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking ... except for online bike forums

[colker]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

My dictionary has this:

so·cial me·di·a
/ˌsōSHəl ˈmēdēə/
noun
noun: social media; plural noun: social medias
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking ... except for online bike forums

Mine says every newspaper, tv, billboard is a social media. ydmv.

[wernerherzogsid]

Social media has existed since the first human beings drew animals on cave walls with charcoal and pigment by firelight.

This desire to share information, knowledge and personal belief dates back as long as man could be called man. It is a need that appears fundamental to human existence, emerging from a singularly unique and deep emotional wellspring to connect with others of our kind, to commiserate in the common experience of living.

What is Instagram, if not the modern cave paintings of our digital souls?

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by wernerherzogsid

Social media has existed since the first human beings drew animals on cave walls with charcoal and pigment by firelight.

This desire to share information, knowledge and personal belief dates back as long as man could be called man. It is a need that appears fundamental to human existence, emerging from a singularly unique and deep emotional wellspring to connect with others of our kind, to commiserate in the common experience of living.

What is Instagram, if not the modern cave paintings of our digital souls?

Damn, Werner. That is some deep ****. Really well written. But did our primordial ancestors take that medium (the cave drawing) everywhere they went? Seems like it would inhibit chasing down prey.

BTW, really loved your work in "Grizzly Man." I can still hear you saying "Timotheeeey."

[Ti Designs]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

Why does that prevent you from having a cell phone?

I can't multitask. Most people can drive a car and look for street numbers, which is to say that the information needed to drive is kept while you switch to the secondary task of looking for numbers. My brain is in overwrite mode, the information needed to drive the car (how fast I'm going, what's in front of the car, which pedal my foot is on) is overwritten. It's like waking up behind the wheel of a moving car over and over...

I don't learn things the same way everybody else does. For almost everybody the learning process is one of memorizing a sequence. I've never memorized anything, so my education growing up was a total failure. I have to understand how things work, which is why I'm the one reverse engineering the pedal stroke instead of assuming that pedaling a bike is natural. Most mobile electronic devices are coded on the assumption that people will learn sequences to get better at using them. I don't. Imagine giving an iPhone to someone from the 70's and watching them use it for the first time with no instruction - that's what it's like for me, and it never gets any better.

There is an up side. Much of what you think you know has been inserted into your head over time. Your view of a healthy diet was probably beaten into you by your parents, who probably weren't biologists or organic chemists - they really didn't have a clue, but that didn't stop them. Picture in your mind a healthy diet - do you really understand why? It's what's called a cognitive bias, it's something in your memory which you trust. I have far less of that than most, and I am always challenging what I think I know.

In 1999 David Dunning and Justin Kruger published "Unskilled and Unaware", in which they suggest that to assess your own ability at a skill you must have that skill. It's the paper that launched the Dunning-Kruger effect where the bottom 20% at any given skill assume they are in the top 20%. I disagree with their conclusion, I think the thing needed is critical review. Social media doesn't allow for critical review. Give a critical review on Facebook and you'll get some very angry responses. The result is that everything posted is great! I've posted some of my worst photography and still never got a single critical response.

The answer of the question "does social media do harm" can be found in one number - dc/dt or the change in competence over the change in time. Is that number positive, negative or zero? If critical review is that start of the learning process, then dc/dt can only be negative.

Still think the lost art of reading is the big problem?

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

I can't multitask ...

Okay, but why does that prevent you from having a cell phone?

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by colker

Mine says every newspaper, tv, billboard is a social media. ydmv.

Are you that person I see yelling at billboards?

[Ti Designs]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

Okay, but why does that prevent you from having a cell phone?

In problem solving there's this thing called the free test. Removing something from a scenario to see the outcome is a good example. Try living without using sequential memory. That won't be as easy as you think, so with every action you take ask yourself how you knew to do that. If it's something from memory, don't do it.

[colker]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

Are you that person I see yelling at billboards?

I am the guy who probably made them.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

I can't multitask. Most people can drive a car and look for street numbers, which is to say that the information needed to drive is kept while you switch to the secondary task of looking for numbers. My brain is in overwrite mode, the information needed to drive the car (how fast I'm going, what's in front of the car, which pedal my foot is on) is overwritten. It's like waking up behind the wheel of a moving car over and over...

I don't learn things the same way everybody else does. For almost everybody the learning process is one of memorizing a sequence. I've never memorized anything, so my education growing up was a total failure. I have to understand how things work, which is why I'm the one reverse engineering the pedal stroke instead of assuming that pedaling a bike is natural. Most mobile electronic devices are coded on the assumption that people will learn sequences to get better at using them. I don't. Imagine giving an iPhone to someone from the 70's and watching them use it for the first time with no instruction - that's what it's like for me, and it never gets any better.

There is an up side. Much of what you think you know has been inserted into your head over time. Your view of a healthy diet was probably beaten into you by your parents, who probably weren't biologists or organic chemists - they really didn't have a clue, but that didn't stop them. Picture in your mind a healthy diet - do you really understand why? It's what's called a cognitive bias, it's something in your memory which you trust. I have far less of that than most, and I am always challenging what I think I know.

In 1999 David Dunning and Justin Kruger published "Unskilled and Unaware", in which they suggest that to assess your own ability at a skill you must have that skill. It's the paper that launched the Dunning-Kruger effect where the bottom 20% at any given skill assume they are in the top 20%. I disagree with their conclusion, I think the thing needed is critical review. Social media doesn't allow for critical review. Give a critical review on Facebook and you'll get some very angry responses. The result is that everything posted is great! I've posted some of my worst photography and still never got a single critical response.

The answer of the question "does social media do harm" can be found in one number - dc/dt or the change in competence over the change in time. Is that number positive, negative or zero? If critical review is that start of the learning process, then dc/dt can only be negative.

Still think the lost art of reading is the big problem?

Wow. That's really fascinating. Too bad you're not local. I'd take you out for beers (or coffee) to learn more.

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

In problem solving there's this thing called the free test. Removing something from a scenario to see the outcome is a good example. Try living without using sequential memory. That won't be as easy as you think, so with every action you take ask yourself how you knew to do that. If it's something from memory, don't do it.

Okay but, again, why does that prevent you from having a cell phone?