We respond to scenes of natural stillness

What? Come [...]]]>

We respond to scenes of natural stillness

What? Come again? Rewire young people’s brains? Yes, that sounds like some kind of scary 1984/Brave New World experiment to be resisted. But the reality is that digital technology is already rewiring everyone’s brains.

The issue is whether we are both smart enough and wise enough to learn how to help students rewire their brains in ways that maximize their intellectual potential — and, one would hope, their emotional, moral and spiritual capacities as well. (And maybe reduce their blood pressure a bit at the same time?)

Technology writer Nicholas Carr writes in “Wired” that surfing the Internet for as little as five hours is all it takes to begin rewiring our pre-frontal lobes in ways that tend to reduce our attention span. Expanding on that theme in his new book “The Shallows,” Carr stresses that he is not a Luddite who proposes that we reject technological innovation. He says that we need to figure out how to cope with the unanticipated downside of our new digital miracles.

Carr cites scientific management, named Taylorism after its inventor Frederick Taylor, as an innovation that brought its own problems locked inside. Taylorism standardized tasks and thereby standardized output. And I, for one, think it’s great that all the bolts in our airplanes were built to strict standardized specs. But the downside of routinizing manufacturing systems was that the rigidity stifled innovation and creativity, while driving workers berserkers.

While the Internet has proven itself a blessing, it has not been an unmitigated one. The Internet is the embodiment of distraction. Wow, this is interesting, but whoops, let me click on this link because it looks intriguing. And then this one and that one and this.

Multi-tasking has also become a new way of life. But as we can see from the traffic accidents that result from people who try to text and drive, such distractions risk preventing us from doing any task well.

At the individual level, that’s a car crash. As the societal level, it could be a train wreck.

If computers and cellphones are changing our brains in ways that make it harder for us to focus and think deeply, we need to figure out a wise response, for us as individuals and for our culture. The challenge lies in devising ways to enjoy the benefits of innovation while minimizing the damage from often-unintended consequences.

Which leads me to Internet guru Clay Shirky’s comments about education today on CNN’s GPS (Global Public Square), the thought-provoking show hosted by Fareed Zakaria. Shirky, whose throwaway insights are often more brilliant than the labored observations others require a lifetime to develop, noted that ever since the 19th century, modern societies have chosen to spend enormous amounts of their treasure and time on teaching five- and six-year-olds how to read.

That’s a massive leap of faith for a culture to make. Doing so must have been a hard sell at first, particularly when times were tough. But somehow people instinctively knew that helping young people learn how to read would make them better people, people who would in turn create a better society.

So it seems that the times require a new leap of faith in teaching children how to quiet their minds as much as stimulate and stretch them.

I think back to the much-dreaded mandatory “nap time” I hated in kindergarten. None of us actually fell asleep. Was that actually intended to help us learn how to still our minds between bouts of childish exhilaration and intense concentration? (Or was it just a way to give harried teachers a break?)

But maybe we could start by finding ways to make tapping into our brain’s ability for reflection appealing. First we need to develop strategies that help young people to learn how to tap into islands of mental tranquility within a world of unrelenting distraction. We also need to help them build the habit of doing so, by making it fun.

Meditation offers a proven path toward calming the brain. Research on transcendental meditation confirms that it confers mental and physical benefits. Disciplines such as yoga are also credited with improving mental focus in addition to the physical benefits.

In his book, Carr cites research that suggests a powerful antidote to the downsides of distraction may lie in experiencing nature firsthand:

A series of psychological studies over the past twenty years has revealed that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.

Richard Louv coined the term Nature Deficit Disorder to describe the way modern life has alienated children from the natural world. Urbanization and parental fears have conspired to rob children of the opportunity to experience the special joy of roaming the woods alone.

As a result, children do not learn to appreciate the value of nature and the importance of protecting the environment. Moreover Carr reports that experiencing nature firsthand also enhances our ability to demonstrate empathy and compassion.

Does this mean I should haul all 240 of my students to Baker Woodlot and hold classes there? Sound appealing, but I am not sure the provost would agree.

Carr cites research that showed people who viewed pictures of rural settings exhibited greater calm that those who were shown city scenes. So I may experiment with showing a slideshow of images of the wild, while requesting that students turn off Facebook and cellphones for a moment.

But I would also argue that rewiring youngsters brains so they learn to love nature and can think clearly about the duty that implies must come much earlier in their upbrining. By the time I get them, as freshmen in college, their hormones have kicked in, which may be even more distracting than the Internet.

Yes, I know school budgets are shrinking. But parents with elementary-school-age children could volunteer to organize nature walks. Middle schools could invest in putting in a school garden or a hoophouse or greenhouse so that youngsters can learn the joys of digging in the dirt and having a tomato to eat to show for their efforts. Architects could be encouraged to create schools that look less like prisons and more like conservatories.

The challenge lies in experimenting with ways to help young people develop a full range of mental gears and the ability to shift through them smoothly.

And we may well fail, at least at first. I think many of us are still struggling with how to teach critical thinking. Finding ways to help youngsters train their brains requires not only a new curriculum but a truly new mindset.

However, I feel a special urgency. We need to create new generations of people who can handle the pace of change our world now demands, especially as the consequences of climate change and financial instability require to adapt quickly and well. I want succeeding generations to use technology well without burning out or tuning out.

Though some will argue that this is mind control that poses a threat to traditional values, the fact is that making the leap of faith to teaching young kids how to read helped shape a better world. Making the investment and commitment in teaching youngsters how to calm their minds by learning to love nature may be our best of hope of saving the planet, including saving it from us.
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Other resources:

• Clay Shirky’s TED talk video
• Nature Deficit Disorder
• Saving Kids from Nature Deficit Disorder

See how empty it looks? Help us fill it up

As the co-publisher of Lansing Online News, I want to drive traffic to the site, and the toolbar can be configured to make it easy [...]]]> Check out the toolbar at the bottom of Lansing Online News. It’s a beta of the new free tool called Wibiya (thanks, Chris) that visitors and web producers alike should love.

As the co-publisher of Lansing Online News, I want to drive traffic to the site, and the toolbar can be configured to make it easy for visitors to share links of stories they like through a variety of different ways. You can also see real-time stats (how else would I have known someone from Africa was visiting the site the same time that I was). The toolbar also gives visitors immediate access to popular social networking sites, so they can use your site as a way to access those pages. They can even tweet directly from the site.

Easy installation. No coding required. Lots of customization options. Who could ask for more? (And if I installed one here, would you use it?)

Our first Lost Lansing post recounted when Tillie the black bear escaped from this park

What we have, unfortunately, is two bigfoot companies, each with its own proprietary product, trying to win the open source argument [...]]]> Adobe has launched an ad campaign saying how much it loves Apple. But what Adobe does not love, of course, is Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ refusal to allow his iPad to display Adobe’s Flash plugin.

What we have, unfortunately, is two bigfoot companies, each with its own proprietary product, trying to win the open source argument while locking up whatever they can.

Apple insists it has the high ground because it will have the iPad display animation and video with HTML5, which is open to everyone to use for free. At the same time, however, the iPad is glued shut and completely controlled by Apple, which is also flexing its muscle by serving as a gatekeeper to decide which apps you do and don’t get to download. (Apple had to do a quick about-face and when cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer. yet Apple would not authorize him to market his animation app because he made fun of politicians and Apple has little or no taste for free speech.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is not a household name as Jobs is, and his claim to the high ground suffers now that Adobe has scarfed up its only major competitor, Macromedia. I can attest from personal pain in the pocketbook that even the educational version of the Adobe Master Collection is pricey.

In the words of Rodney King, can’t we all just get along?

But in this case, it is hard to see who is playing the role of Rodney. Both Apple and Adobe seem more like the baton-wielding cops of the LAPD.

“The Edge. There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” These words belong to a man who once described himself as decadent and depraved. The general public knows him [...]]]>

Jennifer Marinelli explores HST's impact on todays' digital innovators

“The Edge. There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” These words belong to a man who once described himself as decadent and depraved. The general public knows him as Hunter S. Thompson. But to those who know his work, he is Rauol Duke and the Good Doctor. The edge is where Thompson lived his life. For that, the world of was introduced to the strange and powerful force that is gonzo journalism.

Hunter S. Thompson didn’t just create a new form of journalism. He created a new way of thinking that is still important in today’s society. A style that is so influential that it has seeped through to the hearts and minds of the succeeding generations. Within the last two decades there have been an onslaught of novels, documentaries, works of art, and websites devoted to Thompson. It is doubtful that many members of the Digital Age partake in the hard gonzo lifestyle of drugs and alcohol that Thompson symbolizes. However, it is hard to ignore the similarities between Thompson’s gonzo journalism and today’s growing popularity of citizen journalism through new media like blogs and Twitter.

Through a lifetime of unique work in gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson has left a legacy that has inspired a new generation of media users and creators.

In contrast to the barrage of counterculture references that we associate with Thompson, his beginnings were humble. In the summer of 1937, Hunter Stockton Thompson was born into a middle class family in Louisville, Kentucky.  His father an insurance agent, his mother a librarian, Thompson’s early childhood gave no inclination that the man would singlehandedly shake the foundations of the journalistic world.

Thompson got his first taste of journalism through a school-sponsored social club called the Athenaeum Literary Association, which mainly reserved membership for those of the affluent upper-middle class. Thompson’s school career took a turn in 1952, however, when his father died suddenly. Barreling into adolescences without a father figure, irreverence for authority became a prominent theme in Thompson’s life. In fact, even though him teachers describe him as brilliant, Thompson did not make it to his own graduation. Instead he completed his high school education from jail, having been arrested for participating in a robbery.

Officially classified a juvenile delinquent, Thompson joined the Air Force. It didn’t take long before he found work as a sports writer for a publication ran from him base in Niceville, Florida. He also wrote for a competing news publication under the alias of Thorne Stockton, diligently neglecting his duties at the air base to accommodate all of his deadlines.

After being honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1957, Thompson began a frenzied journey to find work as a writer. It began in New York City, where spent a short period of time working as a copy boy for Time magazine. Thompson then moved to Puerto Rico where he secured a job as a sports writer for El Sportivo, a bowling magazine. The publication quickly sunk after Thompson took the job.

During his time in the Caribbean, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, along with several fictional short stories. None of these works were published at the time. The Rum Diary eventually appeared on store shelves in 1998, long after Thompson had become famous.

Several bounced checks from El Sportivo later , Thompson was on the move again. He relocated to Big Sur, San Francisco, and South Africa before eventually settling in Aspen, Colorado, and marrying his girlfriend Sandy Conklin, with whom he had his son Juan Fitzgerald Thompson.

In the middle of his restless search to find work, somewhere in between the move from San Francisco to Aspen, Thompson got a green light from Carey McWilliams from The Nation  to write a story he had pitched the magazine about the notorious motorcycle gang The Hells Angels. Thompson lived alongside the motorcycle gang for several years, assuming the role of a serious journalist. However the Angles began to suspect that he was making money off their story and wanted a cut. After breaking the Angel’s trust, Thompson was literally beaten out of the group.

Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga was published in The Nation in 1965 and Random House soon offered a book deal. Thompson was on the edge of discovering his infamous gonzo writing style. Hell’s Angels was considered straight reporting, but there was a certain edge to Thompson’s tone that hinted at fiction writing. He created an anti-heroic mystique for The Hell’s Angels. Much of Thompson’s material for the Hell’s Angels story was recorded on videotapes, which were later used as inspiration for Tom Wolfe’s novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

In 1970 Thompson secured an assignment from Scalan’s Monthly to cover the Kentucky Derby. It was on this assignment that Thompson first met Ralph Steadman, a young artist from England. Thompson was said to have corrupted Steadman (a self-proclaimed goody two-shoes) during their trip, creating a life long partnership between author and illustrator.  The resulting story, entitled The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, is not an account of the tournament, but of Thompson’s and Steadman haphazard navigation through the sporting event. Thompson became a character in his own work and blurred the lines between fact and fiction through the outrage tale, and thus came the birth of Gonzo Journalism.

Bill Cardoso, a fellow journalist Thompson met while covering the 1968 New Hampshire Primary, is credited with labeling Thompson’s work “gonzo.” He spoke with Thompson in 1970 in order to comment on his Kentucky Derby article and said “This is it; this is pure gonzo, if this is a start, keep rolling.” To which Thompson replied, “Okay, that’s what I do, gonzo.”    

Fear and Loathing

In tandem with the creation of gonzo journalism was the creation of the Myth of Hunter Thompson, gonzo extraordinaire. The myth exploded in 1971 with his next story about the search of the American Dream. The story was originally supposed to be a small piece covering the Mint 400 for Sports Illustrated, but ended up becoming a lengthy two-part feature for Rolling Stone magazine and was eventually turned into a novel.

 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream begins with the famous line, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Thompson introduced the world to the character Rauol Duke, his literary alter ego and the ultimate symbol for gonzo. Thompson’s depiction of his own excessive drinking and drug use would follow him as an ever-present expectation to practice extreme counterculture tendencies. “…Once you get locked up in a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can,” Thompson explains.

In 1972 Thompson returned to Rolling Stone to write Fear and Loathing On the Campaign trail ’72. The story covered the presidential race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. Continuing with the themes of gonzo journalism, the story exhibited a kind of vicious truth. After the election was over, McGovern himself was quoted as saying that Thompson’s work was the least factual and most accurate account of the 1972 race to the White House. 

 In the late 1970’s, Thompson began to realize that the public could no longer distinguish Hunter S. Thompson from Rauol Duke. The thought of this drove Thompson mad. He often told second wife Anita Thompson that whenever he was invited to give speeches or attend parties he did not know if people were excepting to see Rauol or Hunter.

Though he continued to write steadily during the later years of his life, Thompson became a recluse and would often retreat to what he referred to as his “fortress” in Woody Creek, Colorado. Many times he would refuse to complete assignments he had been given. The few things he did manage to finish hailed to his roots in sports journalism. He wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com entitled “Hey Rube” that seamlessly intertwined sports and politics, and ran from the year 2000 until his death.

Thompson took his own life on February 20, 2005 at his home in Colorado. Thompson left a letter on his typewriter that read:

No More Games. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun- for anybody. 67. You’re getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax- this won’t hurt.”

    
His ashes were shot out of a cannon at the top of a 153-foot tower of the Gonzo symbol, a fist with two thumbs, which he created with the help of Ralph Steadman. This was accompanied with red, white and blue fireworks that short off along with the ashes as “Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan played in the background.

Though the Good Doctor is no longer with us, his influence on today’s world is far from fading. Thompson’s work has inspired a well established cult following that shows no hint of dying out any time soon.

Throughout the years, Thompson was the inspiration for many other forms of media.  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe was published in the 1970s and is now scheduled to released as a film in 2011. Where the Buffalo Roam in 1980 was a film adaptation of Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign starring Bill Murray. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp was released in 1998. Later this year The Rum Diary will be released with Depp and Amanda Heard in leading roles.  Since his death there has been numerous documentaries made about Thompson’s life work, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride by Tom Thurman and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson by Alex Gibney just to name a few.

More importantly, however, is that Thompson’s influence has crossed over to the digital world. Whether we realize it or not, Thompson laid the foundations for how media work today, especially in regards to new social media. In true Thompson fashion, every time a blogger sit down at their computer to write they undermined huge new institutions like the New York Times and The Washington Post. There are no editors in the blogosphere to tell them content is too outrageous or advertisers breathing down the necks of writers. 

Bloggers, vloggers, and tweeters can cater to niche audiences as gonzo journalists. This media revolution is nothing to shake a stick at. As the years go one, more and more people are turning to the work of citizen journalists and bloggers with opinions for their news. This trend would do Thompson proud. He is, after all, the man who claimed that, “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.”      

Jeremy Griffin from Ignite Social Media published The Fear and Loathing Guide to Blogging last year. It explains how to become a successful blogger by directly invoking Thompson’s Gonzo style claiming it has the ”kind of no-holds-barred attitude that we should apply to blogging.” Griffin breaks this idea down into six characteristics of Thompson’s work. He insists that bloggers must:

• tell the truth even if it is frightening,
•  break the rules,
• fail,
•  step on toes,
• leave a mark, and
• keep at it, to avoid becoming a “half-ass blogger.”

Is blogging the new form of gonzo journalism? It is hard to say for sure. Only time will tell how this new form of media will develop. However, there is no refuting the incredible impact of Hunter S. Thompson’s work on today. His legacy is one that will continue on in the hearts and minds of his fans all over the world.

News about College from Huffington Post