Humour

The art of coexistence

T A Balasubramanian on how quick kangaroo minds try to grasp meaningful information

Cooking up even more off-beat advice, goofy stories and outrageous insights, Dr Don Jong is back doing his usual jig, dipping boldly into the wondrous world that is the mind of Bobo Jitter, the eternally evolving confused CIO of Bazooka Corporation. Aptly dubbed the ‘Oddfather’ because of the quaint interventions that he dreams up, Dr Jong has a penchant for wrestling tirelessly with IT’s deadliest demons.

“Ah, so what do we have on our mind this week, Bobo?” says Dr Jong, lighting up his pipe with a flourish.

“You know, I was talking to El Gizmo, my project team leader, telling him about the chat we had last week on how we will eventually evolve to accept the kangaroo-mind when it comes to reading habits and books. He laughed and pointed out to me that there is no evidence that we will be made into a new kind of creature.”

“And why does he say that?”

“Well, he agreed that evolution is elastic, but eventually our human ways of doing and thinking rearrange themselves. At every point, the ancient and the very new co-exist. In other words, the Internet will not swallow the printed book, just as the alphabet did not drive out the icon.”

“Ah, perhaps El Gizmo is right, my boy. I forget how blissfully we humans manage all manner of inconsistencies and paradoxes. Perhaps the idealistic picture we have of the solitary, meditative reader pondering over the pages of a book will never fade out—as long as there are books around. In the deeply wired electronic world, we can have room for the sloths—the lazy reader, the languorous dreamer, the cool critic, the silent scholar, the pensive poet—all of these may continue to grapple with complex ideas, emotions and questions in a quiet place. We can keep on the reading lamps in the corner of the library, and yet start up the laptop screen when we are in the mood for kangaroo hopping.”

“But would that not be asking too much of our brains, Doc? I mean, can we keep swinging between sloth and kangaroo modes all the time?”

“If you think about it, Bobo—you do this all the time, anyway.”

“What do you mean, Doc?”

“Ah, permit me to explain. First, let me tell you a secret—I once wanted to become a writer. I read, made futile notes for ambitious writing projects, waited for the spark that would carry me from planning into actual production. I woke up one day and found that my way of living had become intolerable. I could not think, could not write—everything felt sluggish. Night after night, I sat at my desolate desk. Instead of trying to work, I nursed my anguish. I scribbled desperate pages and tore them up.”

“Wow, what happened then?”

“It was a fanciful dream I was chasing. The would-be author saves himself by just continuing to be busy. I think that lethargy is the biggest problem. And I imagine that it is the same with the reflective lazy reader, too. While it is easy to be concerned that my slow and immersive reading habit is getting lost, in the transition from print culture to screen

culture, there is also something new and exciting that I like—and even want to take up like an eager child. As one writer cheerfully puts it—‘We’re metamorphosing from individual and private people to fungible, Web-linked brain connectors in a bright, buzzy, gregarious info-hive.’ But it is a switch that one can turn off or leave on.”

“But is that not too drastic a swing, Doc?”

“Well, my boy, we started the swinging act with technology a long time ago. It happened in our grandparents’ time, maybe at the end of the 19th century, when wearable wristwatches became popular. That was when our notions of time and speed got a radical kick. With accurate time measurement came railway schedules, endless assembly lines, time-and-motion experts and so on. That list can run into many volumes.”

“But we always have been aware of time, Doc. Why would wristwatches make it different?”

“Yes, but now, for the first time in history, you could have constant access to the time as an individual on the move. This also made it necessary to do something about time other than just spend it. All our blissful unawareness vanished. With time literally hanging on our hand, we are reminded about how we waste it, save it or struggle to manage it. We have come to believe that if we do not use it, we lose it. Time is now a trading commodity—if we invest it well, we will get wonderful returns. So you and I, and everyone who still sits down with a book are also watch-wearing members of a speed community artificially racing against the clock.”

“We have more access to time, Doc, I agree.”

“The PC and the Internet continue that story. What they make accessible is vast stores of information, with hypertext, precision and instantaneousness. But even the quick kangaroo mind, for all its nimble acrobatics, cannot do without meaning. Sometimes we just want a bit of data, but more often we want the stream of information to make sense. Computers can arrange and correlate huge amounts of data, make any number of reports in response to a curious search. But only the reflective mind of the seeker, even if it be as bouncy as a kangaroo, will be able to breathe a life of meaning into them. It is only someone who wants to make sense of things who would be seeking in the first place. As to whether he or she reflects and ponders on what is found, who can say?”

“Well, Doc, since you mentioned writing, is it not true that the speed of the Internet tends to affect the quality of our prose?”

“Ah, Bobo, it is not about speed making my words poorer—it is about imagination making my art richer. Whatever else you, as a CIO can tell me, the projects that I have worked on in the past many years have confirmed my view that the computer offers a thrilling extension of human powers. A foreign language, for instance, can be spicily conveyed by multiple speakers in authentic environments than with lists of words on a page. I have seen the drama of Hamlet’s soliloquies better illustrated by multiple performances in juxtaposition with the text than by the printed version alone. Software transmogrifies the text, images, and moving pictures with a new precision that I find quite exciting. And of course, you, the CIO of a big company like Bazooka, would agree, eh?”

“Quite so, Doc. By giving me greater control over different kinds of information, PCs invite me to tackle more complex tasks and to ask new kinds of questions. But I still enjoy sitting around with an old scribble pad and doodling my thoughts.”

“Voila, so we comprehend! Although the computer is often accused of fragmenting information and overwhelming us, I believe this view is a function of its current undomesticated state as a beast of burden. The more we cultivate it as a tool for serious inquiry, the more it will offer itself as a many-splendoured creature.”