The problem is that consciousness encourages us to confuse the map with the territory, and to repress an acknowledgement of the amount of sensory information we receive and act upon, but which never makes its way into consciousness. The vast bulk of our interaction with the world, Norretranders asserts, actually occurs subliminally, literally below the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness encourages us to ignore the amount of our experience that occurs outside its symbolic processes, and this presents a crucial problem for the emergent information society. Since the computer screen takes the model of our own consciousness, since it is in fact made in the image of our consciousness, it flatters consciousness. But because it is structured like consciousness, the information presented graphically through a computer is already narrowed significantly down from the amount that our sensory capacities expect to be dealing with.
Computers introduce a second bottle-neck between individual consciousness and the world.
The rich stream of information circulating around in what has become a world wide web, Norretranders argues, secretly bores us. Our eyes glaze over not because there is too much information there, but because there is too little. Rather, it represents an accurate assessment of the holistic nature of education. Education is not just a technology transfer. It is a complex interaction between and among human consciousness, which technology may be able to enhance, but can never fully mediate or displace.