"Noise" - Media, Technology and human consciousness

[jnms]

Just wanted to post this article about our the ever increasing pace of technology and its affect on our consciousness...

http://www.thethoughts.co.uk/thoughts/noise

Everything is so noisy these days. I think it is an echo of what goes on inside people’s heads. Or perhaps the noise inside our heads is an echo of what is going on “out there" in the external world.

Sometimes it is very hard to find any tranquillity. Recently I started becoming aware of my thoughts whilst I sleep! It is a warm, fuzzy semi-lucid awareness, but even there in sleep, my mind is full of racing thoughts. I am aware to the level that I can feel the thoughts as they occur – there is no linearity to them, my awareness is only on each thought as it occurs. But the moment I wake up I can follow the string of thoughts back. An entire stream of them!

My conscious mind of course is elsewhere at the time of sleep; I was sleeping and wasn’t fully lucid. So where did I go – and if I had gone away somewhere, who’s thoughts were there in my head whilst I slept?

The thing of it is; when I am awake and supposedly fully lucid – the racing thoughts are still present. Carrying on in an uninterrupted manner – seemingly it doesn’t matter whether I am asleep or awake…I constantly have the same stream of unlinked garbage going through my head.

So how often do we mistake these thoughts for an actual thinking process rather than background noise? As I am writing this the humming of the air-conditioner is ever present in the background. Noisy minds are a little like that. The air-conditioner isn’t me either.

The world is full of noise – it over-powers the noise of our minds. In turn the noise of our minds over-power the noise of our lives. It doesn’t stop. Not even in sleep! It is very hard to be peaceful and focused, we aren’t allowed – everything stops us from doing so, including ourselves. We do not stop long enough to see what we are doing and who we are. The noise of the world around us, the noise in our minds – all of it distracts us, and like crazy people we associate ourselves with it. We identify inwardly and outwardly with what is nothing more than static. The static of the technology around us has only served to increase the amount of noise. Everything picks up pace and it is coming faster and more often with little letup.

Digital technology may have reduced the noise of old analogue static – the white snowy pictures on your TV. But it has replaced it with a quantity and volume that is impossible to keep up with. It doesn’t matter if you don’t watch it, and it does not matter if you don’t listen to it. It is all there – always in the background – or else being transmitted through the air and through your body.

Our thoughts are a bit like that too. We transmit them all over the place – in a sense we are like biological transmitters and receivers. We are all linked; strings of emotions and thoughts spread over the entire planet. We all pick up on them – we are hard wired into the human emotional / mental grid and we have got no firewall or protection. Heck most of us don’t even realise we are connected.

Is it like being superficial – but on the inside?

All surface and no real content?

That is the trick – the little sideways twist. Organised thought is not what it is cracked up to be. Connecting the points from A to B to C – it is how we are taught, and it is slow, tedious and often does not even work. Things get missed; we are like horses walking along with blinders. Tunnel vision. We can’t connect all the dots when we can’t see them.

Buried among the noise are a lot of dots, many useable and worthwhile – and some of not much use at all. We ignore them all because they sound like static, and A does not link to B. Sometimes A links to E, H or even Z. It doesn’t really make much sense to a mind that attempts to be organised and linear.

It probably explains the saying; “There is a fine line between madness and genius".

There is something about linear thinking that makes me think of the story of Hansel and Gretel, leaving their trail of breadcrumbs so that they will not get lost. Anyone following those breadcrumbs would have ended up right at the witch’s house as well. Even an animal can follow an easily laid out trail.

Breadcrumbs. Carrot on a stick.

Rats in a maze.

The concept of linear thinking is fine in and of itself. But who lays out the breadcrumbs? Who told us which method of thinking is “okay" and which method is crazy, useless – insane even?

In the TV series X-Files, Fox Mulder was considered spooky – “out there", and so he was relegated to the basement. There are a lot of interesting and useful dots in the basement of our mind. High flyers sit on the upper floors, developing systems of analysis, recording data and searching for those elusive connections. When Scully moved into the basement – ultimately she learnt how to make those connections intuitively; jumping from A to H to Y.

Is there a difference between the noise we as humans generate with our systems, laws, bureaucratic nonsense, media and our technology – and the noise of our inner minds? Is it possible that one set of noise is the static of the false world we have created – and the other set of noise is the signal of our reality, the Universe, our higher-selves, God?

The speed at which our lives move has gathered pace. The more dependant we become upon technology, the faster we go – the higher our expectations become. How many devices do you carry around on a daily basis? A cell phone, an iPod and / or PDA? Think about the devices in your home, a TV, DVD Player, Computer, Laptop, Phone, another TV, wireless routers. How much noise do they generate – how much media consumption do they provide?

It’s gathering pace; things are moving faster now. There is more noise in our minds than ever before. But our reality keeps pace, the faster our minds become capable of working, the more information we will receive – not just the information of our technology – but information from other living beings – and information from the Universe itself.

We can see more now, our mental capacities have increased. That is the gift technology has given us. For what will we use that gift? Further media consumption, to help us live our artificial lives?

Or maybe we can use the new found capacity to tune into the signal of our reality. It too has gathered pace – a quickening of information. A change in the fabric of our reality, we can feel it. The Earth is feeling it – and it is reeling, look around it is easy to see.

Listen to the noise, what is it telling you?


Marcus – 2007

www.thethoughts.co.uk

 

[ark]

Just wanted to post this article about our the ever increasing pace of technology and its affect on our consciousness...

http://www.thethoughts.co.uk/thoughts/noise

We can see more now, our mental capacities have increased.

www.thethoughts.co.uk

I guess it must be a misprint? Should be:

We can see more now, our mental capacities have decreased.

See:

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news/article.htm?id=5430

Low literacy is not chiefly the problem of immigrants, the elderly, high
school dropouts, or people whose first language is not English. Low literacy
is a problem [in the USA] that knows no age, education, income levels, or national origins. Most people with low literacy skills were born in this country and have English as their first language. (end quote)

Here is a list of articles:

http://www.literacyvolunteers.org/news/index.asp?aid=144

Much much more can be quoted documenting this sad phenomenon.

 

[jnms]

Maybe it depends on the perspective, technology certainly has created a "dumbing down".

But the other perspective is that people can now do a lot more things at a time. Take browsing the web for example - I usually have at least 5 tabs open, all on different topics and stories etc. Usually reading all of them more or less at the same time as I flick from one to the other. Before the technology was here I bet there were very few people that would actively sit there on a daily basis with 5 books or magazines all opened on different stories / articles.

I reckon it is all a matter of how the technology is used. In fact it is mentioned in the article in one place. Will people use the new mental capacities to simply consume more and more media (i.e. become dumber), or will they use them to learn more at a faster rate?

 

[ark]

Will people use the new mental capacities to simply consume more and more media (i.e. become dumber), or will they use them to learn more at a faster rate?

It is not the so much the question whether people will use it or not as the question of what is happening now, because what is happening now is shaping the future. And now media are much more influencing the masses than it was some years ago. Now, who is influencing media and who wants more sheep? Young people playing video games, with the advanced technology of subliminal messaging, will more obediently go to Iraq and become snaipers that do not think, because the only thing they want is to shoot and have some "fun". I would state my working hypothesis as follows: starting with a certain level of development, the more technologically advanced and consumer oriented a given society is - the lower is the average level of literacy and of ability think.

My hypothesis is based on my observations and on some reading as well. Perhaps other people have different observations. If so I will be happy to hear them.

 

[jnms]

I think you are correct, especially in terms of the general population.

However I was thinking more in terms of "aware" people, like you and I for example. Technology + awareness + discernment = potential for increased mental capacities?

 

[Rick]

I was just about to start a new topic with this, when I saw this thread.
I just finished reading Wave Book 4 where at the end Laura mentions the prevalence of strobe effects diverting our attention to what's happening around us. I suggest we all buy a TV-Be-Gone to carry around as security.


Die, TV!

The TV-B-Gone, which fits in the palm of the hand, is a universal remote whose sole purpose and power is to shut down televisions. During last year's Super Bowl Sunday, it resulted in at least one thrown bottle, two near fist-fights, twenty-seven (by my count) disappeared Hail Marys, touchdowns, and tackles, one half-time show half-seen (or seen, rather, in a kind of slow motion shutter effect--I with TV-B-Gone closing the screen, the bartender mashing finger into the on-button like a man poking out eyes), and one near-hammering-into-pulp of a writer waving a TV-B-Gone. I deployed across Brooklyn that fateful Super Bowl 2006 with a single unit for a test run, assaulting mostly sports bars and taverns and also one restaurant (where no one in the crowd, not even the staff, noticed the quieting of the television--for me, a key indicator). I have since been terrorizing televisions almost daily. I go nowhere without the TV-B-Gone. I have killed televisions in Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Heathrow, on the streets of Paris, in the restaurants of small Utah towns, in a Virgin Megastore on Manhattan island, and in countless Brooklyn bars.

Mitch Altman, the 50-year-old inventor of the TV-B-Gone, tells me that when he feels depressed he arms himself and heads into the streets. "It's almost a compulsion for me. When I see a TV going in a public place, I go out of my way to turn it off," he says. "Imagine a room where there's an uptight person wearing really bright clothing and jumping up and down and yelling. It's hard to be relaxed when that person is present. When a TV goes off, I notice people's shoulders and arms relax--the body language changes completely. When I'm feeling blue, I turn off a television or two and life just seems a whole lot better."

Altman is a California technophile, a computer whiz, a self-described "geek." He pioneered virtual reality technologies in the 1980s and early versions of voice-recognition software. He built disk drives that were always smaller and faster, and eventually co-founded a company called 3Ware, which perfects disk drive "controllers." He was also a television addict. "I used to collect TVs off the street," he says. "I had 50 TVs in my mom's basement. She was very patient with me. I watched TV every waking moment of my life. But even as a little kid, I remember watching TV and telling myself, 'I don't like this, why am I watching this?' I was five years old when I asked that question. But I kept watching. The one show that I really hated was Gilligan's Island. But it delivered just enough to keep me coming back for more. That is the process of addiction."

Then, in 1980, Altman was watching TV as always, and the question came up that had been dogging him since he was five years old, and suddenly TV was over for him. "I was watching Gilligan's Island--nothing against Bob Denver, but I just couldn't handle it anymore. I went cold turkey. And I've never had a TV since."

It wasn't just Gilligan's Island. It was the physical and psychological awfulness of the experience of watching television. It was the fact that Altman one day sat down in a restaurant with old friends he hadn't seen in years, "but there was a television playing nearby and we found ourselves watching the TV--unable not to watch the television--instead of talking to each other, being with each other."

TV is unique in the EEG activity it summons in the human brain, and unique as well in that it drastically reduces the metabolic rate of the human organism. When you sleep, you use more energy than when you watch TV. When you stare at a painting or read a book or knit or fart in bed, you use more energy. EEG activity during television-watching is marked by alpha waves, those dreamy, spacey waves that also exist between sleeping and waking--a passive state in which sustained intense critical thought is pretty much impossible. Alpha waves are also associated with coma.

The technology that Altman devised to counteract this horror was simple. The TV-B-Gone consists of a computer chip programmed with a database of all the power codes of televisions in existence that Altman could track down from the public domain. The diode eye uses infrared light, which makes it felicitous to zap through clothing or across window panes or from a distance. "The chip speaks 214 power codes that work on thousands of different television sets," Altman says. "The power code for a Panasonic is the same as for a RCA. The TV industry made it so easy on me! I'd love to have a Cell-Phone-B-Gone, a Bush-B-Gone. But those things aren't so easy to get rid of." I suggested a unit that expands and clarifies the purpose, a unit that permanently disables the offending television. "There's no remote control code for 'blow up the tv,'" Altman tells me. "You can always buy a brick. Certainly a bomb is a technology that's been around for a while." One possible avenue is the use of a concentrated electromagnetic pulse that would burn out the circuits. "But how," Altman asks, "do you make it directional enough that it wouldn't harm the button-pusher? That's the question." Researchers should get to work.

Since Oct. 19, 2004, when Altman launched his product, more than 112,000 units have been sold in every state and territory of the US, and worldwide in over 80 countries. In 2005, Altman traveled on a TV-B-Gone tour across Europe, appearing on BBC TV sixteen times in two days--ironic enough. "My main reason for going to Europe," he says, "was for field-testing on European TVs." In January, a host on New York's WBAI talk radio, which was giving away TV-B-Gones for its winter fundraiser, noted that enthusiasts are now suggesting ingenious modifications. For example, one might mount the tv-killing diode eye in a hat, with the clicker device linked by cable in one's pocket. Or you might build an amplification unit with multiple flood-eyes that literally, as Altman put it, "turn off televisions any direction you look."

Super Bowl 2006 was effectively my own field test. Why go after the Super Bowl? The Super Bowl by its attraction of those scores of millions of human eyes brings to bear what is arguably the most expensive and sophisticated marketing and propaganda apparatus in history, and therefore it represents television's awfulness par excellence. Also, there is the issue of the essential but unspoken pathologic weirdness of men who never exercise gathering to peer at other grown men who run around on a screen in a plastic box chasing a piece of leather and smack each other on the ass when they catch the leather (at which sight the men watching the ants on the screen in the plastic box clap and jump up and down and touch each other as well).

When employing the TV-B-Gone among lunatics such as this, immense care must be taken. Here are suggested rules for terrorizing the upcoming event on February 4. First off, when the TV goes out, the TV-B-Goner should scream the loudest in protest to deflect suspicion. This makes strategic comrades of strangers who otherwise will want to smash your TV-B-Gone to bits. Second, order your drink before you strike; otherwise, the bartender will be too busy fending off the apes protesting the darkness at noon on the screen. Third, be drunk, even if you're not; everyone else is. Fourth, frequently throw up your hands in cheers; you can also, to look normal, produce a steady black-pantherish fist to celebrate "your team" (pick one); this allows innumerable angles to grab the eye of the target TV. Fifth, and most importantly, do not stand up in the midst of the horror of the evening to announce, after too many drinks, that you and the TV-B-Gone are the source of the trouble and that the TV-B-Gone is just wonderful and you can buy it anytime at www.tvbgone.com.

 

[anart]

hmmm - how much does that little gadget go for?

;)

 

[rs]

hmmm - how much does that little gadget go for?

;)

Its called "the remote control". ;) Generic programmable remote controls go for a basic $20 to fancy-schmancy ones for $150.