The only post where I really have anything to say

Throughout the semester, Professor Baldwin presented us with a sort of thesis question: what is the future of the audience? His hypothesis was that by involving the audience in the performance, the "ADD generation" could learn to appreciate theater. I would say that he should reject this hypothesis.

Watching the reading of RUR, I thought that it was well acted, and I appreciated that a modernized version of the text was used, which corrected many of the flaws of the original play. However, from where I was sitting, I could barely hear the actors. The people around me kept complaining that the play was too long (is 50 minutes really that long?) and kept negotiating how they could leave early while having someone sign their name on the attendance sheet.

Ironically, this reminded me of almost every science that class I have taken at Stony Brook: professors desperately try to hold student's attention by making class more interactive and modern using clicker quizzes, group work, videos etc. The students "interact" and then promptly return to talking to their friends or surfing the internet.

The problem isn't that plays and lectures are too backwards. Its that people have lost the ability to "stop and smell the roses". Recent psychological studies have shown that people who constantly multitask with texting, ipods, video chat, facebook etc. actually are losing the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli in tasks requiring sustained visual attention. In other words, they are losing the ability to focus.

Unlike Rossum's universal robots, we can't redesign our brains in a day. Our minds are designed to focus on one thing at a time. There is no way around this fact.
I think that new mediums for art and theater should be created. At the same time, I think that embracing the incessant sensory overload of the 21st century isn't the way forward.

Many famous artists and scientist have made breakthroughs while taking walks in the park. Experiment: go to any park and watch what anyone under 30 is doing: if they are by themselves, I guarantee you that they are texting someone: cellphones have replaced self reflection and deep thought.

In rebuttal, a girl once pointed out to me that through social networking and email, young people today have written more than any previous generation. While this is probably true, how much of this writing contains original thought? Could it all just be noise? Try reading an average facebook message and then compare it to a letter from the 18th or 19th century (there are tons of examples). Will anyone be reading our hastily written facebook comments in 100 years?

Basically, what I'm getting at is that, much like in RUR, technology has outgrown us. We are computing devices designed to look at trees and hunt deer. We can modify ourselves to a degree, but when we get to the point where any analog experience (formally known as "reality") becomes boring, maybe we need to take a long walk in the woods, out of the reach of cellphone towers. Maybe then listening to someone talk for an hour wouldn't be so dreadful.