Years
ago, when the first Apple Macintosh 128K computer was released in 1984, I
recall spending countless hours writing my dissertation, and being delighted
that I could change anything I had typed in a second compared to the typewriter
days that were only a couple of years in the past.
And,
typing till the early hours of the morning while the snowstorm was raging over
that small Midwestern town, we had a definition of our relationship with the
Macintosh: “Companionship without Compassion.”
The
Internet seemed to remedy to the above solitary relationship by facilitating
social connectedness. Now we learned to use technology to stay connected.
Yet,
compassion did not seem to be defined in the innumerable combinations of
1&0. Even when connected, we had distance among and across us. The virtual
boundaries of our connectedness were "safe" because denuded from compassion, touch, and
smell and often sound. We were now part of a network, created through and by
technologies that would change us and our world in less than 40 years. And the social
connectedness definition would now join a new paradigm, that of “connectivity.”
Indeed, now our interaction, virtual and without being enwrapped in compassion, was defined thru becoming one of the at least two points in a network and establishing a
connection.
A
book I enjoyed to read about this topic is by a professor from Utrecht University
José Van Dijck “The Culture of Connectivity. A Critical History of Social
Media.” And, while learning about the role of the media in connectedness
and connectivity, my mind made connections between the biological world of the brain
and the importance of distance in both social media users and the connectivity
in neural networks.
Here
is how my medico-biological world helped me understand digital connectivity and
social connectedness:
A
distinct line of analytic neuroscience research deals with the understanding of
geometric distance and the effectiveness of human brain networks. It is of
course unadvised to make comparisons across disciplines by mixing biologic,
metabolic and social topics, but the connectivity in the digital world
reminded me of neural network connectivity, and the connectedness across media of the concept of distance. A recent article about geometric distance and brain
networks by Alessio Perenelle at al. “Dependence of connectivity on
geometric distance in brain networks” Scientific Reports 9; Article no.
13412 (2019) discusses this topic in an accessible style for wide audiences.
Another
scholarly analysis of the brain networks is from Brazil by Jean Faber et al’, “Critical
elements for connectivity analysis of brain networks” (2019) arxiv.org/ftq/arxiv/papers/1904/1904.07231.pdf
which builds upon the earlier work of Bullmore and Sporns. My favorite summary
of the latter authors' thesis is:
The dependence
of connectivity on the physical distance appears to be a trade-off between the
complexity required to carry out cognitive tasks and the metabolic costs of
establishing and sustaining s huge number of elements and links
And
that trade-off brought me back to the physical distancing imposed upon us by
the digital technology. Interestingly, no one today even thinks about how life
was before virtual everything. But we are now affected by “social distancing” imposed
upon us by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Physical
distancing and social distancing. In both instances it is a form of isolation,
of loneliness and often depressive moods for some. But in either instance it
is for survival either in a world changing because driven by new technology, or
a new social configuration where people remain fellow humans but also vectors, carriers, and
sometimes inconsiderate citizens.
So,
we will connect two points in a network and we may learn where the nods are, but
many of us will often take a halt and recall how things were when “good morning” was followed by a warm hug not an emoji!
September
21, 2020
©
Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020
PS/
I took this photo with a Soviet/Ukrainian medium format Kiev camera in Vienna,
Austria near the Stefan Dome cathedral. There is a lack of connectivity AND
connectedness in this photo even when one person was mimicking Charlie Chaplin!
