I have a review of Daniel Goleman’s new book, Focus, in the New York Times Sunday Book Review this week. It (the review) starts:
“Ineluctable modality of the visible.” So begin the musings of Stephen Dedalus as he walks along Sandymount Strand in the third chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. “Signatures of all things I am here to read.” The chapter isn’t just a tour de force of prose writing. It’s an exquisitely sensitive depiction of a mind at play. Conscious of his own consciousness, Dedalus monitors his thoughts without reining them in. He’s at once focused and unfocused. Seemingly scattered ideas, sensations and memories coalesce into patterns, into art.
Brain researchers and Zen masters call this state of mind “open awareness” …
In my Digital Media Ethics class, we discussed how technology encroaching on our lives allows neither the space or the environment necessary to develop the autonomous self, in terms of how we view our privacy and how we choose to respect other people’s privacy. This relates to the idea of “open awareness” in that the mind requires that quiet space in order to entertain its own thoughts and ideas, to explore creative possibilities in pursuit of discovery and realization. In an always “on” digital world, focused on immediate connection rather than reflection, the processes of independent thought do indeed run the risk of disappearing altogether, which will really make it so much easier for algorithms to run our lives, without all that pesky human condition nonsense.