A Double-edged Sword

Technical writers, including myself, tend to tout the benefits and overlook the costs associated with the Internet.  Thinking back, I note that a typical column points out the pros and cons of various facets of the Internet but the emphasis has mostly been on the cons and not the pros.

This is not to say there are no negative effects because the Interrnet’s quick and easy connections can be exploited by Scammers, N’eerDoWells and Nogoodniks. Today’s column will attempt to balance both viewpoints using the example of trying to coordinate family  meetings using the Internet.

My wife and I were expecting our son and daughter, one of our grandsons and his “significant other”  to meet for Thanksgiving in Iowa at the home of our other grandson and his family which included our first great-grandchild. The problem here was getting our son from Albany to Plattsburgh so he could fly with us to Iowa.  There was only one bus that departed from Albany 

and arrived at a reasonable time in Plattsburgh. 

 Using the Internet as a search tool, we looked at bus and train schedules and found that while the train would be marginally more comfortable, the bus less expensive as well as offering a more reasonable set of arrival and departure times. While the train would be marginally more comfortable.  However, our next search of airlines revealed that he could fly to Chicago from Albany and meet us there in the terminal at approximately the same time as we flew in from Burlington.   We were able to coordinate our flights to Chicago to meet in O’Hare and fly on to Iowa together. This worked without too many hitches by using the free Email and Texting  services on the Internet to make airplane connections and lodging arrangements. 

Our Christmas plans involved getting our son, daughter and granddaughter to Plattsburgh. This raised the problem of getting our granddaughter to Plattsburgh from Europe where she and her significant other were woofing (a woofer is a person who volunteers their time doing various chores on a farm (such as digging, weeding and carrying away waste from the animals such as horses, pigs and cattle} in return for free meals and lodging.)  Additionally we wanted to coordinate their arrival in Burlington as close as possible to avoid two trips across the lake. 

Looking back at all of the travel  arrangements, without the Internet, I have to admit that we'd still be making phone calls. However, the Internet usually provides “Too Much Information”( aka TMI) which, in turn, impedes the search process. We gather much more information in a shorter time, but then it takes longer to inspect and separate the wheat from the chaff to really solve the problem at hand.

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Most of us  have always considered most technology as a double-edged sword ---  it cuts both ways. We should learn from the young child who asked his Mom, “Where did I come from?”  After she explained  the whole process in minute detail, the Mom asks,”So why did you want to know?”. “Well, responds the child, I made a new friend at school who says he comes from New Jersey and he  asked  me where I come from.” TMI.

I have found the most important computer skill a person can acquire is knowing how to formulate a question such that it will return the most productive results. This also applies to other creatures--- particularly human beings. I’ve been working with computer technology for over 60 years and I still have difficulty getting it right on the first try. One of my early bosses had a plaque in his office  that sums this up, “Never enough time to get the job done well , Always enough time to do it over. Do the job right the first time and be done with it.”

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Another useful skill is, after getting the information from the computer, to discern the bias of the article itself --- is it slanted to the left or to the right? No opinion is free from bias but a good source for US politics is: www.allsides.com/media-bias/ratings. 

Another question that arises is, on the whole, is the article in question slanted towards criticism or praise?  An entertaining  article from the Times of London opines that criticism usually trumps praise in terms of affecting the  behavior of the recipient. (www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/may/09/you-suck-why-criticism-is-more-powerful-than-praise) The piece points out that criticism is more powerful than praise for many reasons but I think  “Evolutionary Theory”  as presented in the article  is the most convincing,

“As many have noticed, criticism tends to have more impact and stay with you a lot longer than similarly delivered praise (within reason; an arena full of people screaming that they love you isn’t going to have a lesser impact than someone tutting at you if you hold up a queue). The potency of criticism manifests in many ways: it is the de-facto approach in workplace performance evaluations; ... This is not to say it’s unnecessary. Criticism, when done thoughtfully, is a very valid tool that helps people improve. And there is some research to suggest that both criticism and praise can be equally harmful in some contexts. It makes no logical sense. But then, “It makes no logical sense” could be the slogan for the human brain. It should be etched onto a brass plaque and nailed onto the temporal lobe...

The greater potency of criticism isn’t just a learned response; research suggests that there’s an actual neurological bias our brains exhibit, placing more importance on negative stimuli, eg criticism. It’s a very persistent bias. We’ve evolved to respond quickly and strongly to negative stimuli, and have dedicated brain regions like the amygdala, which encodes the emotional component (eg fear) of an experience so that it remains potent and we can rapidly learn from it.

When you live in the wild, “negative stimuli” can often mean “death”, so the faster you learn from it, the better your chances of survival, ergo evolution would favour humans who dwell on the negatives. And our brains may be a lot more sophisticated nowadays, but criticism is still a negative stimulus, and millions of years of evolution can’t be switched off easily.”

To which I might add that we have to be told to “look on the bright side”.  This means that our default response tends to automatically choose criticism.  How depressing. 

 I cannot end this article without acknowledging the contributions of my wife as a critic and a proofreader.