Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni.cristiani
Titolo: [OT?] RL e' solo una delle tante finestre

The screen-age: Our brains in our laptops
By Christine Boese
CNN Headline News
(CNN) -- When I taught at a university, I worked with the wireless
laptop programs that are replacing computer labs on campuses.
Once students began carrying laptops everywhere and using them in
class, an interesting dependency developed. There were times in class
when I asked a question and students would glance helplessly at the
machines, as if to say, "The answer isn't in my carbon-based brain,
but I know I got it right here, on silicon."
Or, if the answer wasn't stored in their notes on the hard drive, it
became a contest in which students would search the Net madly to
compete for extra credit points.
It was always a sad day for the ones who showed up with a dead battery
and no power cord, a busted keyboard or loose wireless card. They
watched the rest of the class in a flurry of activity, frustrated and
feeling like half of their brains -- more than half for some students
-- was missing.
Marshall McLuhan -- the prophet
Amazingly, the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan saw this coming in
the 1960s. Many things he predicted about television did not appear
until the appearance of the Internet and portable computers: so-called
"ubiquitous computing."
McLuhan believed our senses become extended outside of our bodies. He
suggested that a book was an extension of your eye and a car, an
extension of your foot. He would say the Internet is an extension of
our central nervous systems.
If we think of ourselves as somehow projected outside our bodies,
one's sense of self becomes increasingly fragmented. My math brain
lives partly inside a calculator.
My consciousness isn't just split between gray matter and a hard drive
or two. Now part of it lives on the Internet and seems to stay there
all the time. While I may feel a bit diffuse, mostly I observe changes
in what McLuhan called our "sense ratios," like a goldfish changing
from one kind of aquarium to another. We adapt. We gain some things,
lose others.
Internet researcher Sherry Turkle in her book "Life on the Screen "
interviews college students about their online lives. She is
interested in their ability to multi-task in ways some older people
cannot. She describes students as bombarded with media from multiple
sources on a typical night of studying in the dorm.
How young people live
A student may have a textbook open. The television is on with sound
off (perhaps with the CNN Headline News modular screen). They've got
music on headphones. On a laptop hooked in to the Internet there's a
homework window, along with e-mail and instant messaging in the
background. The Web has become an essential part of checking facts and
figures for the homework (not to mention plagiarizing with copy and
paste). On top of that, the student may field phone calls or talk with
a roommate.
One of the most striking observations in Turkle's findings was a quote
from one multi-tasking student who preferred the online world to the
face-to-face world. "Real life," he said, "is just one more window."
College students are the leading edge in adapting to this new goldfish
bowl, these new multi-tasking sense ratios. Some of us will hold on to
the old ways by our fingernails, afraid of losing a coherent self.
Others will plunge into the new collective nerve center, our various
selves loosely joined in a partial free-fall at all times.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Find this article at: 
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/02/school.internet/index.html
 

 laptop programs that are replacing computer labs on campuses.
Negli ultimi due anni sono stato assistente in un corso di statistica,
per il primo e secondo anno di economia.
Una volta solo, se ricordo bene, uno studente ha tirato fuori un laptop
mentre stavo facendo lezione.
Lo ho guardato con una sorpresa (e forse anche un po' di schifo) cosi`
sincera che il laptop si e' richiuso ed e` sparito nello zainetto.
Mentre un insegnante parla lo si ascolta, porco giuda :-), non si naviga
in internet. E gli appunti si prendono meglio a mano.
fb
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...con la matita copiativa :-)))
Saluti appuntati
Forex

 sincera che il laptop si e' richiuso ed e` sparito nello zainetto.
E' successo anche a me, in un corso professionale che si tiene in
un'aula attrezzata con una quindicina di computer.
Fino a quando l'ultimo computer non è spento, non inizio a parlare.
-- 
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy        e-mail: 
ll...@dada.it
Home page: 
http://www.angelfire.com/ar/archivarius
                   (musicologia pratica)