English 642: Computers and Composition

Blog Post #8

We see what we are told to see

            Attention blindness as the author puts it claims that when we focus intently on one thing we particularly miss everything else. Although his claim highlights some truth, he missed the part where he failed to mention that our brains have simply been programmed from birth to see only what we are told to see.   We are told to look at a rattle and not something else. If we were presented with a rattle and a music box simultaneously then our brains would be forced to see them both or choose particular interest. Take the video experiment of the ball tossing for example.  The people were told to focus on the number of ball tosses of the people in white. Therefore, that’s what the brain did. It focused on what it was told to do. If everyone was simply asked to watch the video and tell what they see including the number of ball tosses; I guarantee that everyone would have spotted that gorilla.         

           

            These are the limitations society places on us even at birth. We are molded to think a certain way and any deviation from that model is considered abnormal, dyslexic or a neurological disorder.  And even though I might agree a tiny bit that one can have attention blindness I think what most people do have is perceptual blindness as he later explains that “attention blindness is the fundamental structuring principle of the brain”. (2)

           

            15-year-old Jaden Smith makes a very interesting point that if we un-school everyone we all could become much smarter. There is some truth in that because the brain would be able to go wherever it wants to go and everyone could see what is in their peripheral rather than what we are told to see—a kind of dyslexia we could come to appreciate. This idea coincide with what the author mentioned that “our abilities to pinpoint a problem and solve it, an achievement honed in all those years in school and beyond—may be exactly what limits us” (3). Therefore what we need to do is essentially deprogram and reprogram the brain which in effect is what the author describes as “learn, de-learn and re-learn”.

          
 As easy as the notion of programming and reprogramming may sound, there is simply too much to absorb and therefore it comes to matter of selection. We choose what is most important to us, thereby neglecting the not so important, although the neglected could have significant impact on our lives. Thus we are in a constant battle as to what is important in our lives; what do we need to learn or de-learn? What must we be concerned with?  “Learning is the constant disruption of an old pattern, a breakthrough that substitutes something new for something old. And then the process starts again”. Therefore, as information such as the Internet and the Web continues to change and becomes more relevant, so too, we change focus to accommodate the going principle of selection.

           

            Although the internet is praised for having the ability to provide mounds of information at one time or any given time, it is highly impossible to focus on the gorilla but rather on the thing that interest you at that time. For e.g., I am now typing this blog post; I have another paper that I am also working on. I would love to be watching “The Housewives of Atlanta” at this time, but my multitasking abilities will only allow so much. So what is the gorilla?—Atlanta Housewives, because this blog is my area of interest at this time and takes precedence over everything else that is going on around me or in the world that I could have seen but not able to because my brain is now programmed to write this blog.

            While I agree that in order to succeed, we have to be on par with what is going on especially in the digital world, our new world—the World Wide Web; And that we have to educate our children along that realm; we literally have to think outside the box, we have to know what’s going on around us in order to manipulate the system to suit our own interest.  We have to defy the normalcy of our present educational system and chant our own unique path which will still appear to some as abnormal. As the author points out that “if you are a successful entrepreneur in the United States you are three times more likely than the general population to have a learning disorder”(9).  This proves my point that the most successful people are those who were not able to be programmed by a set of rules, but those who chant a different course yet are labeled to have neurological defects.

            So, while we may agree that schools need to refocus their agenda and taylor their curriculum to accommodate the rapidly increasing digital age so that kids can become more aware of what is around them; In my view, it doesn’t bring about anything new.  What the digital age represents is simply a different form of programming the brain from an early age to look this way instead of that way and to see what you are told to see rather that see the entire picture or rather the giant gorilla that we are programmed not to see.