Us vs. The Machine

Watching The Machine is Us/ing Us was fascinating, and, if I can be completely honest, a bit terrifying. While it is incredible the strides we have made in technology simply in the last two decades with the rise of the internet, it is astounding how these new technologies have shaped our culture and society in a variety of positive and negative ways, the consequences of which will not be observable for the foreseeable future.

I struggled with identifying the key difference between reading physical texts and referring to web pages and hyperlinks, other than the obvious medium change, and it finally hit me: The way we absorb material has fundamentally changed because of the internet, and even more specifically, the hypertext.

The flexibility of digital text, as showcased in “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” is ultimately very freeing: We have access to a wealth of information at our fingertips. It was the dream when Diderot created the encyclopedia, the first attempt to capture all information known to mankind in one place. Now, that place is the internet.

Hypertext, from my own personal observations, has a myriad of benefits if one keeps an open mind. A few clicks on YouTube and Wikipedia, and you can drift from the Magna Carta to The Best Cat Fails of 2017 in mere minutes.

Many have remarked that the attention span of younger generations seems to be decreasing, and I attribute this greatly to our ability to navigate and process information. When I was in grade school, I loved reading. I voraciously consumed every book I could get my hands on, and would spend hours at a time curled up reading in my bedroom. I even stayed up all night to finish the final installment of the Harry Potter series, and at 12, that alone was a feat.

Hypertext represents, overall, a new way of learning. Rather than reading through a book, whether it be a novel, a technical manual, a textbook, or an anthology, hypertext allows one to navigate easily to topics that pique one’s interest, and skip over sections that are not relevant to learning goals.

Subconsciously, I believe we all understand the vast quantity of information available to us through the internet, and I believe that creates a sense of urgency to learn everything we possibly can about a subject, or anything of our choosing. This can be applied to every aspect of our lives: formal education, video games, political science, et cetera. The hypertext serves as a gateway to the next thing, and there is always another hypertext or link to click, and always another thing to learn.

While stewing about all of this, I came to the conclusion that the more fitting title for this video could be Us vs. The Machine. The computer, and subsequently the internet, have opened up so much potential in terms of human knowledge, but consequently, there is the sacrifice that comes with adapting our brains to process information in a completely new way. Some devices have found and pioneered ways to blend these two methods together, such as the Kindle.

Overall, the video The Machine is Us/ing Us made me question how much this technology has impacted my life, and I am finishing up this post feeling slightly uncomfortable about the whole situation.