Growing Up with the GUI: Youth, Technology, and the Future, pt. II

Originally written: January 12, 2007

It amazes me every day just how intuitive the use of computers has come to be for students these days. Even a 5-year-old, not even really reading yet, will take the mouse and begin clicking away on things, as if it were an extension of the hand - extruding the self into a mental space.

And it makes me wonder: this is really the first generation of pre-literate computer users, at least in large numbers. What does this do to the acquisition of reading skills? As far as I know, we can't be sure.

I think it's quite likely though that, as this generation ages, we'll begin to see more problems with reading, at least as regards tracking left-to-right, line-by-line. People may become better at reading and perceiving holistically, but the linearity of books will frustrate them, for at least two reasons: 1) their familiarity with hypertext, as I touched upon in my SIP, 2) the way their perceptual systems have already been conditioned by the dynamic, reactive, multimedia, holistic environment of the modern GUI.

And these perceptual differences, which we will perceive as difficulties (because of our own experience and the way in which our culture is constructed), may well carry over into more abstract conceptual space. Already Dr. Mclelland at Covenant says he's having trouble getting students, even bright ones, to understand and follow logical arguments. I expect (as per McLuhan in Understanding Media and Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death) that this form of discourse will become increasingly alien to most people.

However, I expect that growing up with the GUI will have as many benefits as it has drawbacks, even if we can't imagine them all yet. They likely could not be imagined by us, simply because we can't step out of the perceptual/conceptual categories that have been formed by the experiences of our early life (considered as a media/technological environment).

As I said in an earlier post of this series, our lives is becoming more convenient by the year. Distances are becoming compressed; the "natural sorting" which is a result of our existence in physical space is being overcome. Yet all the conveniences which technology has introduced soon become necessities, for they are accompanied by a corresponding increase in social complexity - an increase made possible by the very conveniences which were to simplify our lives.

I expect that the accelerating rate of change will make it difficult for the older members of society to remain economically productive in the future. In 20 years, when the kindergarteners of today are getting jobs, will those of us who haven't grown up with the GUI be able to compete?

We're engaged in a great social and psychological experiment, the results of which will show just how much plasticity the post-childhood brain has. Learning to live in the GUI is like learning to speak a new language, except one which is more visual than verbal, and in which metaphors are startlingly concrete. It's much easier to teach this language to those who meet it with the inquisitiveness of childhood than it is to teach it to those older than I, who struggle to find an analogue for it in their earlier experience, and naturally fail.