Pornography and the Internet Generation

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=8/8/2008
Clinical psychologist and licensed therapist Jill Manning offers a tool that will arm youth against the enticement of pornography. Her new book, What's the Big Deal about Pornography? A Guide to the Internet Generation, posits that parents and children ought to be talking about the problem of pornography more, but in very focused ways. Jill Manning joins us for the interview, with Jason Carroll of the BYU School of Family Life.

Posting on Postman

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview on a related topic: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/11/2008

Twice now (in over three hundred Thinking Aloud interviews) the title Technopoly by the late Neil Postman has been mentioned. A third allusion would be the charm. (Any bets on how soon?) Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to have Technopoly crop up again in just about any interview touching on human behavior or cultural trends—or at least Postman’s name. So today I’m thinking about Neil Postman, a cultural commentator on things related to media and education. Nowadays we all fancy ourselves media experts; there’s little point in distilling any ideas from Technopoly in this post. A simple weblink suffices; you can Google the rest. Do I endorse the book? Yes … probably … haven’t read it yet, actually. But as I think about this title and its author—who three years before his death delivered the August 2000 commencement address at BYU (an address that in its extreme brevity seems to have met the minimal length requirement to justify conferral of an honorary degree), I can’t help but wonder if, in coming years, a general education at any reputable university (including BYU) will not of necessity include a prerequisite course along the lines of media-and-technology-literacy, so that, as Postman put it, the educated person will be in a position to “use technology rather than being used by it.” I’m not a card-carrying member of the truly wired generation. But even those of us who grew up watching Walter Cronkite and Gilligan’s Island (premiere broadcasts of the latter!) … we older, perhaps wiser folk know that technologies push not only content but values at us that we wouldn’t necessarily choose to pull. Even something as archaic and outmoded as television did that to me (for far too long, I’m ashamed to say). The internet does it to me. Alas, almost no barrier is sufficient to prevent the pushers. (Didn’t that word have really nasty connotations in the 60s?) Finally, a really nice Postman quote for you: “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” (from The Disappearance of Childhood [1982]).

-Marcus Smith

A New Era in News and Information

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/11/2008

The world wide web ... a saturated world of fact and fiction, diaries, opinions, videos, photos, buyers and sellers, and oh so much more...I can’t even list them all. Indeed, the landscape is changing in news and information. A new era has arrived in media consumption. The internet traffic can be overwhelming for some of us, with seemingly endless blogs and vlogs, podcasts and vodcasts. All you have to do is “google” this or “yahoo” that and download it or Facebook it. Some say, this is how they stay connected with their “friends” and show them their pictures. And I think to myself, isn’t that what we use hotmail.com and yahoo.com for?

And then I think, when did we lose our personal touch? What happened to our more intimate encounters where we met face-to-face for lemonade, hot chocolate, or shared a milkshake? Did we lose it around the time when Alexander Graham Bell made that first telephone call and later proclaimed to his father of seeing a future when "friends converse with each other without leaving home" (http://www.americaslibrary.gov/). Well, Mr. Bell, it’s become a lot more than you bargained for.

These days, I have to try to decipher my friends’ tone of voice through their text messages. It seems our hand held devices and computer screens get more face time than those near and dear to us. In fact, it reminds me of an email chain I read that in essence says we’ve traded the postal stamp for an email account and within the last several years, we’ve traded the email account for a networking site or a blog space. It seems like our treasured “friends” are now part of our Facebook or are invited to read our blog and post their own thoughts, rather than being invited to share a meal with our family or spend a night out on the town listening to a live band.

Things have become too convenient. We’ve become so self-important that everything we want to say finds it way on an internet blog or posted on a Facebook “wall.” There’s just too much traffic. Yet, what’s the alternative? Technology is streamlining our communication. I remember the day when it dawned on me that I would no longer be able to communicate with my two best college friends the way I wanted because they lived overseas and phone calls became too expensive. Even now, I dread making phone calls to friends who live in the states because time zone differences make it difficult to call within my “free” cell phone minutes... as no one provider offers everything you need for just the right price.

Yes, the landscape has changed immensely and I’m wondering when we’ll eventually stop communicating face-to-face and just rely on our Facebook to have profound relationships with people we call “friends.” I wonder when we’ll blog our ideas instead of getting together for neighborhood meetings. Will the internet become so crowded with all of our “stuff” that we’ll have to start paying hefty tolls just to be part of the Web community? Don’t get me wrong. I love new technology. How great are our iPods? Huh? We don’t have to carry around a bunch of CDs in some felt covered pack anymore...right? How great are text messages ... especially when you just need to say a few words because you don’t have time to talk. Without a doubt, new technology makes communication easier and accessible to many ... but at what cost? As with anything, people can abuse and misuse great technology and ideas. I hope that this new landscape in news and information ... this new era in media consumption doesn’t turn us into Sandra Bullock’s character in the movie The Net. Hopefully, we don’t turn ourselves into these islands where our only human contacts are done in binary code. Maybe there’s a way to bridge the personal with the technological without becoming too superficial. Perhaps only time will tell. Or maybe I just need to wrap my head around this new world of communication and realize that this may be as “personal” as it’s going to get.

-Nkoyo Iyamba

Literature in a Technological World

Most technology becomes irrelevant over time as someone introduces a new way to build a house, throw an arrow, play a game, or share music. In contrast, well-crafted literature, like Homer retold in his epic poem Odyssey, endures as a relevant part of the human experience for three millennia and longer. Technology merely makes life more comfortable and enjoyable and at times may even prolong days or years. The tools used to shape a life of comfort and ease, however, never give it meaning and purpose the way literature does. Literature is heartache, anger, blasphemy, exuberance, and despotism, but it is also passion, joy, worship, reverence, and freedom. It is built of the elements that celebrate life; literature is life. With each turn of a page, a reader loves, hates, dies, and is born again.

When I was ten-years-old, I languished in a German concentration camp with other unfortunate women through Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. Since then, I have faced life with greater determination and gusto than someone who merely dies a thousand deaths in a simulated game can ever appreciate. Although one might argue my suffering was merely vicarious, because ten Boom crafted a well-written story I came to appreciate the struggles of Corrie and her sister Betsie in a way that made those experiences a part of my own life. Even if characters are fictional, life implications are real. I endured slavery with Eliza in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as though I was confined with her because the fictional story captured actual human experience. Since then I have enjoyed a freedom that only those who have shared the tragedy of slavery can appreciate.

In today’s world of blinking lights and constant beeps from slim phones announcing themselves at inconvenient times, we are constantly reminded of the importance of technology to our daily existence. However, amidst the din of white noise as technology insists we give it attention, literature still has the power to take us far from the superficial world of longing, getting, and possessing, into a world of solitude exposing those quiet places in our soul to the things that make us most human. It is during these moments that literature accomplishes what technology never can. While technology may make our lives more comfortable, literature can make them uncomfortable in ways that transform us and give our existence greater meaning and purpose. Therefore, as we suffer at the hands of unscrupulous suitors with Penelope, feel the sting of condemning friends with Job, experience pathos as Hamlet faces unavoidable tragedy, or feel indignant about class prejudice with Eliza Doolittle, we experience life in a way that will never go out of fashion or become obsolete. This experience gives life meaning and purpose.

-Anna Staker

The mind that lies fallow but a single day …

The Thinking Aloud team meets “officially” once a week in a dim newsroom tucked away in the basement of the Harris Fine Arts Center on the BYU campus. We kick around ideas. We survey the coming week. We listen to Marcus talk about his kids. Mostly, we sit in a circle with our hands on our chins, wondering how to keep you engaged and excited about our little radio program.
More than that, we want to keep you thinking. We want to stump you and send you back to the drawing board. We want to interrupt that often monotonous orbit of eat, work, pay, save, play, worry, sleep, etc. You could say we’re concerned for your well being. We care about your brain and what it can do.
So, as we tossed around the idea of a Thinking Aloud blog, I must say that I furrowed my brow, scratched my head, and wondered why. The internet seems to have already become a bog of blogs. In the era of microwave everything, including microwave thought, the blog is just another iteration of the media world, a stripped down column that gets info out even faster.
But I finally realized that a Thinking Aloud blog made sense. In fact, I realized such a blog is essential to what we hope to accomplish from right here in Utah Valley, for those who live here and anyone else. I returned to my mentors, the great Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, the guys who understood not only the power of the periodical, but its importance and potential. Can you imagine a New York Times columnist opening his article with a quote from Virgil? Of course not. Check Addison out on Monday, 12 March 1711 (300 years ago!) writing for the Spectator – #10 to be exact:
“As if one, whose oars can scarce force his skiff against the stream, should by chance slacken his arms, and lo! Headlong down the current the channel sweeps it away” (Virgil).
Thinking Aloud is definitely a small skiff of a radio program fighting its way against the main “stream” media. Addison goes on to say:
“Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day.”
Addison says lots of other good things (check out Spectator No. 10 here). The point is, Thinking Aloud has raised an audience to itself, maybe not a “great” one in numbers, but certainly a great one for the quality of its thought. There are no major blogs from Utah Valley. Aside from our radio program, the Thinking Aloud blog will hopefully become a useful hub where people can recover themselves “out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen.” Hopefully you will join us now and then for the difficult but refreshing swim against the stream. Hopefully you will share your thoughts, engage in the discussion, and not be afraid to spend more than 60 seconds doing it. At Thinking Aloud, we’ve pretty much tossed the microwave out the window and dug out the ol’ crock pot.
So, let your thoughts stew. Stew a while over other people’s thoughts. We hope you will become as much of a contributor as we are to the process. After all that, a closing sound bite from Addison:
“The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture.”
Who knows what exactly that even means? … that’s why we’re here.

-Brent Rowland