William Powers perceives a kind of "flattening" because of what he calls hyper-connectedness. How is his sense of flattening different from Andrew Keen's? To what characteristics of being connected does he attribute flattening? Please respond by Monday, Nov. 29, at 4 p.m.
ADVISORY:
Those of you who've missed responses to previous posts can compensate by doing your "personal" blog. When it comes time for me to calculate final grades, I will be taking into account the following:
1) Papers (on Postman/Idiocracy, Web page, Streitmatter/Goodnight, and Good Luck, Hamlet's Blackberry)
2) Blog responses (frequency, quality)
3) Class participation (attendance, of course, affects this)
4) Extra credit via personal blog
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Keen and Powers both reference some sort of "flattening" within their writings on digital technology however, the authors have different interpretations of what that flattening is. In Keen's case, flattening is used to describe what he believes is happening to our culture; our cultural integrity is diminishing because the power to create and share knowledge is in the hands of amateurs. In Hamlet's Blackberry, Powers focuses on an internal flattening that occurs when we allow technology to take over our lives and ultimately never stop to self-reflect. By constantly multi-tasking and staying "plugged in," we lose the ability to focus and have in depth thoughts. In our culture, being alone is a bad thing and instead of solitude, it's loneliness. Instead of taking time to self-reflect, our thoughts "lean outward" and we constantly worry about what is going on out there in the world. As Powers says, instead of staying in touch, it's all about never being out of touch.
Both Powers and Keen refer to a "flattening" in their books. However, they differ as to what that flattening means. Keen's flattening refers to a cultural flattening that occurs when a culture evolves to a point where it does not have experts who know a lot about specific things. Instead the culture is made up of amateurs who know useless amounts of information about many topics.
Power's flattening is more of a personal flattening. It refers to the lack of depth in many people's lives. Flattening for Powers is the opposite of living in the present. He suggests that people are busy "racing and skimming their way through their days." They are in a sense flattening themselves because they are not engaging with their own experiences allowing interpretation and reflection on their own lives.
Powers’ idea of the hyper-connected is very different from that of keen. Powers talks about a world, in which we are enabling, where everyone is constantly connected all the time. By this he doesn't just mean everyone carries a cell phone but he means where usage of all these “tools” is not only part of our everyday life but our precious every second. Making a cell phone call but on crack. The statement that hit me the most in these first few chapters was that even when we have what is supposed to be “free time”, its not. Honestly it made me think and then get a bit scared. I must say hes got me hooked, I want to keep reading, and not many books make me want to do that. If we all become these hyper connected people it will I guess be true that we will be “more connected” but we will lose ourselves and in reality be less connected. Yes, I will know when someone is at a local restaurant because of their status update but that is all I will know. Everything is becoming so surface like he said that I don't think that depth will become a main stream thought in the average persons mind any time soon. This book is definitely making me think, think on a deeper level. Not about what tools we’re using but how they are effecting us as individuals, deep individuals.
Keen refers to the flattening of our culture as "blurring of lines between traditional audience and author, creator and consumer, expert and amateur." Keen's main point is that the internet and extreme reliance on technology will lead us to a civilization devoid of a hierarchy of experts in any field. His fear is that the bloggers will take over. Powers makes a similar point but in a different fashion.
To Powers, the flattening of our culture is due to our "hyper-connectedness." Our reliance on Facebook, Twitter, smartphones have created a passivity in our everyday lives. We are becoming more concerned with the digital extensions of ourselves on the Internet than ourselves in real life. This goes deeper than a younger generation's obsession with technology. We live in an age where grandmothers have 50 hour a week Farmville addictions. It seems that the Internet and social media in general has led us to become more and more prone to narrating our actions rather than actually doing them. The inclination to share our every thought with the world (sometimes without a filter) is what ultimately leads to Keen's fears.
In Andrew Keen's book Cult of the Amateur, he discusses a phenomenon that is a "flattening of our culture". Keen discusses how the freedom of the internet has led mere amateurs to post their work, however crappy it is, and share it with the world. This has broken down the hierarchy of expertise that we once had and trusted. Our high culture has simply become a flattened culture.
William Powers' book called Hamlets Blackberry also discusses the idea of "flattening", however in a different sense. Powers discusses the "flattening of the individual". He talks about how because of technology and our obsession with never being out of touch with our 200+ friends, we have flattened ourselves. We no longer are able to think deeply. We do not have the ability to live in the present and truly experience what is happening around us. Our thought process has become short and shallow, disconnected from everything that actually matters. Powers main idea is that we are losing ourselves to technology, and honestly, this book is waking me up to my everyday actions and I am beginning to change my ways, even if they aren't as extreme as some of his examples.
William Powers believes that there is a kind of flattening happening in our society. The flattening he writes about is different than Andrew Keen's sense of the flattening of our culture though. Powers contributes this flattening to the inability of people to disconnect themselves from this technology saturated reality they choose to put themselves in. Powers recognizes that because of the digital devices we have so readily available, we are becoming more connected to each other all the time. However, our connectedness is not delivering all the benefits and satisfaction it should. We are filling more time being immersed in our screens, keeping ourselves busy through texting, emailing, tweeting, etc. Powers says we are not just busy overcrowding each moment with tasks, but we are internally busier, cramming our minds with all of these thoughts and feelings. Powers argues though that this plethora of knowledge and emotion from our over use of digital devices results in a lack of depth. This loss of depth of thought, feeling, and experience is what's comprising Powers idea of the flattening of our society. This hyper-connectedness is distracting people from diving down, critically examining and understanding what people once strove for.
They both have similar views on the "flattening" of culture, but I think Powers focuses on its affect on human relationships, as opposed to Keen who focused on society as a whole and its relation to technology. Powers explains some characteristics as hyper-connectedness, the feeling importance. He describes how technologies allow us to feel internal satisfaction that we manifest through short cuts. He writes, "the external validation provided by the incoming messages and the number of times one's name appears in search results is not as trustworthy or stable as the kind that comes from inside. Thus we're forced to go back again and again for verification. Who dropped my name? Who's read my latest post? Who's paying attention to me now?" (p. 46-47). The culture has been flattened because of the decrease in effort it takes to get satisfaction from personal relationships -- sharing ideas, complimenting or criticizing one another -- basic communication has been altered. Our culture has now been trained to have our emotions triggered by OUTSIDE forces as opposed to the ones coming from inside, as Powers talks about. If Keen was criticizing technology and how it effects our culture's businesses, entertainment, and our arts, Powers is suggesting another powerful critique on technology's affect on human relationships with one another.
Keen describes our culture as being flattened in a different way than Powers. He says how our culture is being flattened by all of the technology we have. It is becoming more and more of an amateur's world rather than full of experts in specific fields. Our world's intelligence is diminishing because of the lack of skills required in order to succeed in fields.
Powers on the other hand gets more personal with his references to flattening. He pays more attention to the way we are being flattened by the technology we have at our fingertips. Instead of helping us, which in a way technology obviously does help, but it also has been hurting us by making us less human and more robotic, and "flattened". We are too dependent on our facebooks, cell phones, and ipods and we don't even see these dependencies because we are too wrapped up in them.
Keen sees a flattening of our culture as a undermining of the expert and the rising of the amateur. Keen believes that the Web 2.0 revolution is leading to the fall of the hierarchy of knowledge and expertise. Powers has a different idea of how technology is flattening our culture. Rather than focusing on the downfall of the expert, Powers focuses on the flattening of individuality as a result of constant contact with others. People are now constantly connected to each other through the internet and cell phones, which is resulting in a loss of self awareness. People are constantly living their lives in a task orientated way, propelling themselves into a constant sense of busyness and allotting themselves little time aside to have physical contact with people or even themselves. Powers observes how it is rare in this day and age for someone to be by themselves. Even if someone is actually alone, they are rarely truly alone. The lines of distance have been blurred with our technology filled lives.
Keen's sense of flattening is more exterior. What Keen wants us to do is to look around ourselves and see how the culture is falling to pieces, and then see what that means to ourselves.
Powers is more interior. He talks more about the self, and how our own identity, our own thoughts, are being suffocated by our hyper-connectivity.
CotA and HB are essentially two different genres. Where Keen is a culture commentator, Powers is more of a philosopher. He attributes the mass proliferation of screens and gadgets to the undying business of our minds, leaving ourselves unable to experience deep thought.
Andrew Keen’s sense of a flattened culture refers to people on a global level whereas William Powers’ idea is more individual. However, both are very much related.
According to Keen, our culture is flattening to do the ability for amateurs to share their knowledge on a given subject and our willingness to listen to them and “learn” from them. Powers’ sense of a flattened culture relies on what he refers to as hyper-connectedness. People feel the need to constantly be connected to whatever screen is nearest; a television, computer, iPhone etc. We become so caught up in how we’re doing in our virtual lives that we completely disregard how our actual lives are being run. We have the ability to be connected to millions of lives and have access to endless amounts of information and therefore we can’t even process our own information. The Internet can be a wonderful thing. It can help us and perhaps point us in the right direction. However, it has become nothing but a distraction for those who use it and it is causing us to become disconnected with reality.
Both Keen and Powers describe some sort of “flattening” in our culture in each of their books. Keen explains “flattening” as the flattening of our culture. He explains how amateurs are the new experts of our culture, and they are the ones who people are trusting for information rather than those who are experts in a specific field.
However, Powers explains his idea of “flattening” as a more personal flattening. Because individuals are so dependent on technology they are losing their ability to focus and understand different ideas in depth. He explains how people are always busy and never have time to self-reflect. Technology is taking over our lives and allowing us to always be connected to everything without any personal time being “disconnected” for a second. By just having your cell phone in your pocket, but being physically alone, Powers explains as still being connected. The ability to connect to someone so far away in 4 seconds is all around us, even if we think we are alone. We are never alone when technology is involved.
William Powers’ thoughts on hyper-connectedness are different than Andrew Keen’s “Flattening” theory. Power states that technology has caused us to lose a sight of human reflection. Technology has led human society to be pushed faster, constantly moving and overly busy. He refers hyper-connectedness to a large digital room of billions of people constantly tapping or poking each other. Although, we are more connected than we ever, humans are losing depth within ourselves, our relationships and the natural world around us.
Keen argues that the negative effects of technology are “flattening” a culture that’s increasing an amateur population. Keen yells at us by saying we’re getting dumber and describes how experts are losing their voice within the democratization of the internet. Powers coaches us into seeing beyond the digital world, the natural world of self expression and to disconnect from the technology.
Powers also says that being connected “flattens” our culture by causing us to ignore our inner selves. Powers compares us to a Looney Tunes character about to be crushed by an anvil. We walk aimlessly through life with a busy mentality and don’t stop to think. The meanings to everything are flattened in technology because depth seems to be eliminated. Powers writes in Hamlet’s Blackberry that we, “think of life in outward terms, as a series of events unfold in the physical world we all inhabit.” It’s like living life as a plot to a movie while ignoring the symbols, meanings, lessons, and metaphors.
The main difference between Keen and Powers' interpretation of flattening is that Keen refers culture whereas Powers focuses on us as individuals. They both describe a definite shallow depth of each, respectively and are blaming technology. Powers maintains that this interconnectedness and feeling a slave to various devices is flattening our lives. We are literally losing depth as humans, the more we interact with our media and technology sources. Keen describes flattening as the creation of amateurs and thinning out of experts. Our culture is not specialized, we are all Jack of All Trades.
In The Cult of The Amateur and Hamlet’s Blackberry Andrew Keen and William Powers (respectively) write about a flattening in modern culture. Both attribute the flattening to the Internet, but both see the issue taking hold in different fronts.
Keen describes his flattening as “the blind leading the blind.” He says that the Internet has cut down experts and replaced them with amateurs: as a result, hurting our society and the intellectual state of the masses.
Powers focuses on the inner flattening taking place in someone’s modern psyche. He says that because people are constantly focused on what other people are doing there is seldom time for introspective thoughts. People are becoming internally flattened because of their inability to focus and have profound contemplations. This syndrome appears to be caused by the over use of social media and communications technologies that simply make it too easy for someone to fixate themselves with the lives and thoughts of others.
Our “attention culture” is killing one’s ability to think beyond their own face or rather, facebook.
Keen's flattening as we have commented on time and time again is that of a leveling of intellectual grounds. Where amateurs are of the same quality as an expert, savvy?
For Powers, flattening is more mental and personal. If you can imagine a heart rate monitor which at death is a flat line, but with life there are jagged ups and downs, he feels our culture is more or less becoming mental dead. He says that a lack of deep thoughts is contributing towards our flattening, a lack of self reflection and actualization. Each of those acts is like the pump of a heart that adds depth and height to our flat mental state. Powers feels that with our constant state of "plugged-in" ness we do not allow ourselves to add depth to our lives. Thusly leaving us flat-lined and dead.
And everyone knows what it means when you hear that constant BEEEEEEEEEPPPPP. We may very well soon be close to that.
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