Nicholas Barnard
October 24, 2002
Philosophy of the Internet
Dr. Charles Taylor
The question of linearity in the media we consume is no small two-dimensional issue. It drives at the heart of the web, “new media”, Internet sites, and even web based distance learning. The concept linearity is a way of explaining how we perceive the world and the prepared works around us. The fundamental questions concerning linearity are: Is linearity a construct of human rationality? If so, is linearity desirable to understanding the world and prepared works around us?
In considering if linearity is a construct of our rationality we must first recognize that humans are, at least in the American tradition, taught to value the clock as the regulating force of time. Everything happens by the clock, we wake up, go to bed, get to work, leave work, eat meals, and consume entertainment according to the tyranny of the clock. Time-telling devices have pervaded our time-controlled society to the point where many people carry on their bodies two if not three or four devices that tell the time. In addition, it is not uncommon in many rooms (especially the kitchen) for there to be multiple clocks visible, all attached to devices that don't fundamentally need a clock. We, as Americans, demand that everything around us be attached to a clock.
But, even given the society's obsessive attachment to the clock, the question still remains, albeit in a more refined form: Without learned influences and society's mores, are humans beings that perceive the world in a linear manner?
There are of course constructs of time that are inescapable without artificial structures, specifically daylight and the seasons of the year, without artificial structures these two characteristics are inescapable by humans. Tim Parks in “Tales Told by the Computer” states, that “A desire to be outside time, free from linearity, can only be expressed within time and the bounds of the line.” But Parks makes the forgivable mistake of applying his learned rational linearity of time to the hypertext tales that have implicitly and explicitly made clear that they exist outside the structure of linearity. Shelly Jackson writes her hypertext tale Patchwork Girl, or A Modern Monster “I tell myself, I am a third of the way down through a rectangular solid, I am a quarter of the way down the page, I am here on the page…. But where am I now? I am in here and a present moment that has no history and no expectations for the future.” [Ellipses in original] Jackson makes it explicit clear that her piece is to be read a mental place where there is a lack of time keeping, where the past and upcoming events have no bearing. But is this a state that humans enter frequently?
Humans on a regular basis exist without conscious knowledge of time. A simple example is to ask a child where they were for the past several minutes or hours. They often will have to reconstruct a time line in their heads, often with the help of parents, who impress the importance of rational linearity on their children. Similarly, if you ask an adult what they were doing recently, they often will have a lack of knowledge of the linear progression of what they have been doing all day, but will instead answer the question by reviewing the visual knowledge in their head, to construct a linear description of it to tell you.
In addition to when people are unable to readily recall the linearity of their day, there are pockets of non-linear actions, that while people are in them, they are unaware of the passage of time. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow - the Psychology of Optimal Experience calls this a special state known as Flow in which people “…forget themselves, the time, their problems.” [Emphasis Added] Diane Ackerman, who describes Flow in her book Deep Play, describes deep play (her term for Flow) as “…an absence of mental noise -- liberating, soothing, and exciting. It means no analysis, no explanation, no promises, no goals, no worries.”
While the question of mental states is arguable, Michael Kelly, the author's former roommate, argued that Flow and chemical addiction induce quite the same symptoms in people, but without the same results. Ergo, one of the reasons people utilize chemical substances is in a misguided attempt to achieve the hyperfocused state of Flow. Dr. Ivan Goldberg describes a condition called Internet Addiction Disorder where users' Internet “…use continues despite knowledge of a persistent or recurrent physical, social or psychological problem caused or exacerbated by net use, such as sleep deprivation, marital difficulties, lateness for early morning appointments, neglect of occupational duties and feelings of abandonment in significant others.” This description could also fit chemical substance abuse; therefore it is reasonable to assume that both are addictions that people use in search of Flow. The question that remains unanswered how many people experience a mild or full-blown state of Flow while using the Internet. It is reasonable to conjecture that a reasonable of Internet users at least sometimes reach at least a mild state of Flow.
But, the question of learning while in a state of Internet Flow remains. Donna L. Hoffman, a marketing professor at Vanderbilt University believes that people in a state of Flow“… retain more than consumers who do not,' she says. They'll stay on line longer and return more often.” Following Hoffman's assertion, people who consume information on the Internet in a state of Flow will retain the information. But, given that people in a state of Flow are not analyzing the information they are consuming, they would not be learning, or creating knowledge for themselves.
Hoffman continues in the article and believes “Going with the Flow also may boost creativity. `Things really are woven in a web, with lots of nonlinear' connections, she says. That encourages looking at problems from many different perspectives.” This feature of the Internet is perhaps fundamental to why it is seen as an ideal teaching tool.
If the teachers seek to create an environment where acquiring knowledge is important, it is also important that the knowledge be true and not simply replicating the falsehoods that the writers of the knowledge may have created. This is an implicit characteristic of high quality education. John Stuart Mill states this in On Liberty saying “He is capable of rectifying his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone.” This is also the conclusion of Dreyfus's essay on distance learning, as he feels education includes “…coaching, to manifesting the necessary involvement, to showing how the theory of a domain can be brought to bear on real situations, to developing one's own style - one can see why the university can't be disintermediated.” (p. 48, 49) Discussion and mentoring are fundamentally important to gaining knowledge, and are difficult to teach in the disembodied worlds of the Internet.
We are now left with considering if linearity is desirable to understanding our world? We clearly have an ability to gain information or learn stories in a non-linear manner, in fact this may be more desirable than linear information or story gathering, as any text explored in a non-linear fashion implicitly must engage the reader in choosing what to read. In addition, the psychological benefits of being in the mental Flow state may further increase memory. But, compared to a normal classroom, the Internet for many people discourages rather than encourages inquiry because of the slower response times on questions posed to professors, and lack of facial feedback. Ergo, nothing can replace the interaction of students and teachers and artists and their patrons, but distance learning and hypertext narratives may be reasonable means to gather information, but are poor places to acquire knowledge.
Leslie Miller, “Internet users go with the 'flow'”: USA Today, April 29, 1996, accessed on October 24, 2002 from <http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/lcs073.htm>
Ibid.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. Ed. Elizabeth Rapaport. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1978 (p. 19)