Quality, not Quantity

I’m not an especially fantastic writer like some of you other fellows seem to be, however this is my best attempt to communicate what I got out of the reading. In response to Danielle’s blog, I would agree that human interaction with other humans, with the environment, and even between the two hemispheres of the brain is certainly important and necessary for happiness and progress. However, I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that we are worse off as human beings because of our technological dependence. “Only connect!” (Forster, 9) To connect to the Internet is connect to the world. Some say direct social interaction is becoming increasingly scarce in a world where more “cowardly” indirect forms of communication such as “the palmtop shrine of the BlackBerry” (Levy, 43) are preferred. But if social interaction remains just as necessary for survival as it always has been for the human species then, like any other species, we will adapt in order to fulfill that need. So, perhaps more important than attempting to increase the instances of social interaction is the importance of increasing our ability to express ourselves thoroughly in these sparser moments of social interaction—using both hemispheres of the brain to “Hammer your thoughts into unity” (Yeats, 125B) and then to express those thoughts effectively. After all, what good is more human interaction when all that is exchanged is meaningless small talk? It’s the age-old argument of quantity versus quality, and quality always wins.
Equally as important as expressing thoughts and perhaps twice as difficult is the ability to express emotions. As an Architecture major, I know I will be forced to consider the emotions that my buildings will generate in its inhabitants. Even more challenging is attempting to convey the emotions in a building design to a client. Just as in Margaret’s plastic bag video and in Ryan’s “text” video, a combination of two dimensional drawings, three dimensional models, the spoken word and many other forms of communication that utilize both left and right brain capacities are employed in order to communicate an idea however complex or abstract. “Color and shape help architects and designers speak to the public in a language they understand, either consciously or subconsciously.” (Silverman, 243) The abilities to detect subtleties such as emotional tone and synthesize feelings, images, sounds and words together with technological resources like the Internet are what allow humans to continue to communicate in a quality, not quantity, unmatched by any other organism.