Daniele La Barbera, M.D., Chair of
Psychotherapy, University of Palermo
with Tonino Cantelmi, Vincenzo Caretti, Marco Longo
WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICINE AND HEALTH
"MEDICINE MEETS MILLENNIUM" HANNOVER EXPO 2000
July 21- August 31 (Topic n.27).
Wide and fast diffusion of new information and communication technologies
and their growing entry in every field of human experience and activity put
a lot of important questions of psychological, psychosocial and psychopathological
nature. With the fastest diffusion of the Internet, today world wide about 300
million people are online and so our lives are more and more interlaced with
computers and informational networks; their process of globalization are indeed
transforming not only work, employment, social and economic dynamics, but they
also finely and rapidly modify the way we think, feel emotions, create and communicate.
Many researches in a large number of countries in Europe and in U.S.A. are going
to try the study of these problems also in order to point out some dysfunctional
behaviour caused by a too much prolonged or intensive use of new computer mediated
communication technologies (video terminal trance (1), internet addiction (2),
emotional and cognitive troubles regarding identity and regression based on
a computer identification (3)).
In this paper, some of the psychological effects of the changes led by information
technology (I.T.) are examined with a special regard to the cognitive functions
and affective-emotive dimension; the variation induced by computer mediated
communication on the space-time-relationship-sensorial experience parameters
are also briefly considered. In trend with some of the most important researches
on this topics (Frances Craincross ( 4 ) Steven Johnson ( 5 ), John Suler (
6 ), Sherry Turkle ( 7 )), is recognized the important role played by the processes
of virtualization of human experience with the increasing tendency towards dematerialization
and interconnection. So more and more human activities and concepts today seem
to shift from "material" reality to "virtual" world on line.
This communication revolution and the consequent unceasing flow of information
will modify, probably for ever, our patterns of meeting, relationship, emotional
interaction.
Computer and the electronic network are opening not only new ways of knowledge
and development but also a new dimension of human experience, in which we can
try out different modes to become aware of time, space and relationship. These
possibilities don't depend entirely by the technological power of the new media,
but by their psychological qualities too and by their ability to interact with
human mind in a subtle way.
With regard to this problem we must begin to consider that from a psychological
point of view the Internet satisfies at the same time at least three basic needs
of human mind: to travel, to know, and, tied to these, to observe reality from
different outlooks, that is to transform now and then one's consciousness.
This is the first great reason for the strong affinity between telematic network
and the mind and it can better explain the second important reason of this affinity
that is, as the media theorist of Mc Luhan's school Derrick de Kerckhove ( 8
) suggested, the feature of all electronic media to extend sensorial perceptions
and mental faculties. Then computer and the Internet, as well as television
and radio, can be considered "psychotechnologies", because they are
technologies that emulate, enlarge or extend the power of our mind. Computer
and the Internet show this property at a very high level so they are the real
psychotecnologies of the electronic age, more than other media.
They also allow us to interact and so to preserve, in part, our individual autonomy
with respect to the powerful tendency to the collectivization of the traditional
media.
Furthermore computer just in his usual name of electronic brain and in its memory
functions, one of its most important ability, reveals the analogical closeness
with the organic support of our mind and so it may represent a symbolic bridge
between the technological dimension and the human one. This electronic brain,
as the human brain, has also two distinct ways of functioning, like left brain
and right brain. Left brain of computer concerns his powerful calculation skill,
his rational ability to classify, to file, to analyse, to put in order according
to exact rules; but computer works also as a right brain by his figurative language
represented by the icones, windows, desktop and all the symbols that allow us
to interact with it. Let's think how many spatial metaphors we use to describe
online activities and service: worlds, rooms, windows, domains.
Besides computer drives our imagination and fantasy allowing us to create and
enjoy music or drawing and painting. So each one of us can feel more attractive
the skills of left brain of computer or the skills of its right side because
of personal attitudes and tastes: we can consider computer as an electronic
calculator, like the meaning of its denomination, or we can appreciate in it
the ability to speak in images and its artistic tendencies.
Then there is a strong affinity between the particular way we think or behave
and the manner of using computers.
It is because of these reciprocal agreements and correspondences that computer
may
affect many facets of mental life; as Sherry Turkle proposed a few years ago,
it may be considered a second Self. And which experience of time and space can
we get in this second Self of virtual experience?
Computer and Internet have the power of shaping spaces and places where it's
possible concretely to act or to interact; internet in the last years has become
the place where business, productive activities, distribution and consumption
aim to shift; a place which can produce the presence of many places at the same
time. Here we begin to observe how time and space meet at the big digital Net
in a very special way, but the problem isn't so simple.
Down the centuries in the exploration of the roundabout space, mankind has passed
from a knowledge of an horizontal space, with limits at first in Herculi's Columnes,
after in Western Indias, and finally without limits in the earth ( 9 ), to a
knowledge of a space defined in a vertical sense, from earth to moon, from the
moon to the solar system, from the solar system to the galaxy and in the future,
to all the universe: from the finite physical world to the infinite.
In this sense, our generation is really daughter of the stars, because it directly
lived, since 1969, the year of moon conquest, the dimensional jump from an horizontal
expanded universe to a vertical expanded universe spreading to the infinite.
It's easy to perceive by intuition some of the effects of this cognitive and
cultural revolution: new age philosophy, many new forms of spirituality or the
revaluation in an innovative way of more traditional models of spirituality,
all these may be connected to the shifting of the limits of known and knowable
physical space from the earth to the planets and stars, from an horizontal dimension
to a vertical one.
But what is now going to happen, with the last revolution begun about ten years
ago, the Internet and Virtual worlds electronic revolution?
For the first time in his history man has begun to inhabit and to colonize non-
physical lands, non material spaces, where he can anyway get meaningful experiences
and shift a lot of activities which before could be performed only in a physical
space. Before Internet digital age fantasy, imagination and overall dream worlds
represented for man the only opportunity to experience non physical space; the
hallucinatory worlds of psychotic conditions or drug induced and those spiritual
ones due to mystic experiences as described by the great saints of East and
West may be considered other less common non physical worlds of experience.
There are certainly many important differences between the non physical universe
of dreams and hallucinations and those virtual ones of Internet but indeed one
of the most important is that we can interact with the electronic world while
keeping control on the situation, unlike what happens in dreams, in the psychotic
disorder and sometimes in the mystic ecstasy too.
Then after the conquest of horizontal and vertical spaces, today man is going
to conquer the lands of virtual space, not less important than the previous
ones.
Internet virtual space is just a world, or better still a whole of worlds, built
by man and explorable as well as a real physical space: it's not by chance if
today the term of
cybernaut - network navigator - is added to the traditional terms of: explorer,
pioneer, navigator, astronaut. Cybernauts explore a non physical space which
however actively engages sensorial channels: sight, hearing, in the next future
probably also smell and touch; so a non physical world that nevertheless involves
a partially physical or bodily immersion. A boundless world built by men, which
every man can contribute to, a continually and rapidly expanding universe like
subject to a virtual big bang.
Internet therefore has introduced the third dimension of known space: horizontal
space, vertical space, virtual space, or in other terms terrestrial space, heavenly
space and cyberspace. So in a few years mankind's new frontier has shifted from
the conquest of star space to the exploration of cyberspace.
Even if the Internet lands have not the features of the physical reality we
live in, they are however real spaces because they allow us to interact with
other people and to involve both in a cognitive and emotive way; with an always
precarious and continually resetting balance between passivity and activity,
between controlling and be controlled, between spectator rule and actor rule,
user rule and builder rule.
And thanks to the always growing calculating power of computers and to their
multitasking properties, the space that opens beyond the screen becomes also
a multi-space because at the same time we can receive last e-mails, start working
a research engine, take part in a news group, download a free software and so
on.
In this way we get the completely new cognitive experience of being in many
places and doing a lot of things at the same time, through a series of windows
that open in this variegated and polymorphous electronic universe.
So time and space in an online computer come to interact in a very special way
which never existed before in the human experience: we perceive a new dimension
in which space spreads out and multiplies and time contracts and becomes faster.
From this point of view computer and Internet increase in our mind the desire
for speed and quickness that are already very strong values in our today's western
technological
society; furthermore they make us more intolerant of emptiness, lack, slowing:
waiting is without doubt the most negative and troublesome experience that we
undergo during the net surfing.
The more quickly we travel in Internet and use the computer programs, the more
we look for software, tools and various upgrades that make the system faster.
So the velocity of computer programs seems to become the velocity of our mind
and thoughts and here again we consider the strong psychological affinity between
computer as a second self, and our mind and Self.
As John Suler has observed, during the full immersion in cyberspace of strong
Internet
users, sometimes it seems as there were no difference between thoughts in the
mind and images on the screen, so the differences and the distinctions between
inner and outer world tend to be lost; in other words, the border that separates
Self from non-Self gradually disappears.
Then when we use computer, intra-mind experience and extra-mind experience tend
to overlap and to mix with different levels of intensity. In this way the Internet
and virtual reality of cyberspace may represent another way to modify our consciousness
and to experience an alternative view of reality, as well as meditation, drugs,
music, hypnosis, authogenic training and other relaxing therapies. If is true
that in our society, specially among the young people, there is a need to change
the state of consciousness, new media and electronic tools of technological
age could play a primary role in this process in place of ritual or spiritual
means. Often when we switch on our computer for trading on line, for checking
e-mail, for taking part in a chat or for buying a book or a CD, it is just our
soul that we are looking for.….Through computer and the Internet, but also
through radio or television at a lower degree, we try to find ourselves and
to create and re-create continually our mental space and our imagination, searching
for something ever new.
All this helps us to understand how great is the attraction of computer and
telematic network for our mind and why we already frequently meet with Internet
addiction disorders or dissociative states due to an excessive exposition to
the computer or on line activities.
This also reclaims the greatest attention toward the educational patterns and
the prevention of psychological troubles and discomfort in the use of computer
mediated communication, in such a way that we can get the best benefits for
our job or entertainment, avoiding the control of computer on our mind and the
loss of relationship in the real physical world.
Cinema and fiction have told many stories of Internet online relations: sometimes
these are wonderful, sometimes strange, sometimes really fearful or dangerous.
On line network represents surely another new important occasion of meeting
for men and women; but just for its fascinating sensorial ambiguity this kind
of communication can involve some risks and problems.
In conclusion we have to underline that exists a suggestive affinity between
cyberspace and our mind-space: the first can be seen as a possible extension
of the second or as a special place in our mind or, perhaps, it could become
a virtual space where download
our mind....... ( 10 ) As in a mirrors' play the relations are infinite.
So we have to strive to understand with an open mind the nature of these relations
to improve more and more our ability to work and enjoy online.
Bibliography
1.) Caretti V.: Psicodinamica della trance dissociativa da videoterminale.
In T. Cantelmi, C. Del Miglio, M. Talli,
A. D'Andrea La mente in Internet, Padova (2000).
2.) Kimberly Young: Caught in the Net. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1998.
3.)
4.) Frances Craincross:
5.) Steven Johnson:
6.) John Suler:
7.) Sherry Turkle:
8.) de Kerckhove D.: The Skin of Culture, Somerville House Books, Toronto, 1995
9.) Mannino Contin G.: La solitudine tecnologica, Sellerio editore, Palermo,
1999.
10.) Jastrow R.: The Enchanetd Loom: Mind in the universe, Simon and Shuster,
New York, 1981.