Techno-Cultural Schisms

me: so what happened?
why he got frustrated?
her: they (students) didn't want to know or see anything
me: that's a perpetual problem with today's generation
her: were blind*
yes na
why i wonder
me: they see everything thorough their cameras
and mobile phones
her: not even through those
not really seeing ever.

3 important points raised in our chat above:
1. Students have become unobservant
2. Students see thing through technological gadgets
3. Tutors feel irritated with this fact.

One can debate these points against each other. but let us try to come to a more relevant discussion after elaborating on the above 3 points.

Observation is a slow activity. Observation includes not only seeing, but also thinking about what one is seeing. It automatically involves an analytical process, where thoughts generated give rise to more questions and more thoughts. Learning in today's age still, particularly in our educational system is more instructive. Thus, 'seeing' is not 'learning'. 'Doing' is not learning. In the pace of life which students have been brought up in, where things around go so fast (fleeting), it is almost impossible to expect them to stand and stare. Although there might be time to stand and stare, who wants to engage in staring? because remember - staring is not considered learning by students.

So what does one do even if he/she has time and is not staring? One engages with objects that one can keep in your pockets. Mobiles, cameras, i-pods, now i-pads, etc. pervade and accommodate our free time. Listening to one song again and again, watching at videos of funny men repeatedly, passing on jokes and building up on them all the time is what accommodates our time reserved for staring otherwise. So, if we have to see around, we take our camera/mobile and frame a view - which as I said, can be seen again and again.

Are we in the process of generating information that can be relived in a later time? Media technology has immensely invaded our daily lives which keeps engaged in producing this data. I am using the word 'data', not 'knowledge'. Data is information, raw material. Thus, we see through our gadgets. I am using the word 'see', not 'observe'. To observe is to see analytically.

I shall jump back to the above two paragraphs to find new meaning (?) later. Before that, I must explain the third point.

We (myself, the '80s ppl) perhaps come from a different cultural background. We took birth in an age where the TV was the boom (but only with a national channel). 1965? A.I.R.! I will not get into my history with Television, but i must say, cable was a craze, and we were not privileged to have it till 2000 (millenium). Telephone was a luxury and we only got it during 1994. Computer was there at home since father was an electronic engineer - and we worked with Wordstar. There was a humble transistor where we would listen to cricket commentaries. Walkman was the newest invention perhaps? The digital diaries became famous in late 90s - they could keep addresses, phone nos and calculators. Solar calculators were priced possessions. Digital watches with light and alarm was a fad. All I am talking about is our interface* with technology.

The IT became a revolution in 2000. It was only during my FYJC (first year junior college) that IT was introduced as a vocational subject in the science stream for the first time. For us, it was alien? But - long live Rajiv Gandhi for bringing in the communication drive.

Technology is not in our blood stream. Or to be politically correct, i think technology is at least not in MY blood stream. But children today are born in this fleeting pace of technology. Electronic toys - they get as soon as they are born - children want to play with mobiles and computers - jumping electronic monkeys. Cartoons are full of electronic stuff. During our time, cartoons seemed only so hard to believe, and that's what glued us to them! Magic has always been a matter of play in space and time. But today I think we live magically* - Bluetooth/wireless/wi-fi/gps and what not!

The question is what do we do with it? We are too caught up with our space-time experience. We feel nostalgic all the time. We want everyone to live that same experience - perhaps only so that we feel at ease with the society (social pace) around us. But the society is bound to make us uncomfortable. How do we accept such change? How fast do we change? Perhaps the pace of this change is exponentially increasing. If we can feel the cultural schism now, I wonder what happens in the next 10 years.

But going into that discussion is another thesis altogether. We have to conceptualize a space within the new time dynamics. To do this, we have to accommodate two fronts - we have to make ourselves culturally forward and a the same time think of engaging the current technology into the system. It's challenging because it changes our pace of living. But i think, it also, at the same time makes the system more demanding. For example, if a student has a query, he/she can immediately call up/email his/her faculty today, and the faculty too can respond immediately - but what happens in this process is that the data sharing becomes almost immediate, to word it differently, the EXPECTATION of receiving data becomes immediate too, which is what pushes you to be sharper and thus pushes you to be demanding.

This dynamic of the space-time relationship has major cultural pitfalls*:
1. the older generation of faculty many a times refuses to accept such demand. they believe that it is not the correct system for addressal of professional exchange. they would rather trust personal meetings and physical exchange of data/knowledge. Due to the ill-information about usage of technology, the distance between it and the archaic user further develops a gap between the guide and the faculty.

2. many a times, in developing countries like ours (i must say in institutional spaces like ours), systems are not technologically equipped to handle any form of soft communication. This can be easily eliminated.

3. the younger generation (those on the receiving end) are not equipped with the skills that the oldies are familiar with/fond of. This is a major cultural schism which irritates the faculties. Such a schism ends up in recognizing skill itself as a practice. so to take an example, within graphic design, there are practices of printing, dying, making paper, cutting paper, laminating, typography, book making, binding, drawing, etc etc... - although a graphic designer must be equipped with much of the above.

So we are going into too much extreme and i would love to carry on. But the point remains to still find a way of working within this technological, cultural schism.

*(a lot more to be elaborated upon)
Responses on this post shall be highly appreciated.