The Sensory Migration from the Real World to the Digital World

23 Feb The Sensory Migration from the Real World to the Digital World

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The Sensory Migration from the Real World to the Digital World

Notes by Chantal Lapointe on a lecture in two parts by Philippe Perennès

Reproduced with the approval of the lecturer

 

PART ONE (the second instalment will appear on March 21st ).

A list of the speaker’s reference sources appears at the end of this article

 

On October 27, 2018, I had the good fortune of attending a two-part lecture given by Philippe Perennès, on the phenomenon he appropriately terms the “Sensory migration from the real world to the digital world.” The first talk dealt with the consequences of this “migration” on the development of the child, and the second talk asked what we can do to counter this situation.

What actually is at stake here? The latest statistics on our relationship with the digital world are alarming: currently, the number of cell phone subscriptions outnumbers the number of human beings on the planet. We can also see that the young spend a great part of their day in front of screens, whether it be for messaging, watching television and videos, or gaming. If we measure in months the amount of time young people spend interacting with screens and devices, it would extend from January 1stto May, 24/7 – that is to say one third of their lives.

Therefore, sense perceptions that were formerly directed towards the real world, are now glued to the virtual world; and that is what brings Philippe to speak of a “sensory migration.”

Meeting the world through perception

Faced with this situation, the speaker asked whether or not it was possible that this “migration” had no effect whatsoever on the human being. Or if, on the other hand, it does have consequences, what are they? In an attempt to answer this question, he asked us to turn our gaze towards our own perceptual experiences.

It is not difficult for anyone to realise that there is indeed a difference between looking at the real world around us and looking at a picture of the world, whether it be reflected in a mirror or on a screen. In the two instances our relationship to the world, what we can learn from the world that surrounds us, is substantially different.

Then we can go on to ask whether the act of perceiving an object can have an impact on the object itself. Indeed, do we all not yearn to be perceived by others? And is it not the most disheartening thing for a human being to have the feeling of not being perceived for who one really is, in one’s work, in one’s accomplishments? This is something we begin to experience even in early childhood. Perennès reminds us that as adults, we have the power to change a child’s behaviour simply by truly perceiving the child, by interesting ourselves in the child, by refining the gaze we direct towards the child. When an adult truly perceives a child, and when the child perceives the adult, something takes place within both the perceiver and the perceived, something that cannot happen without the act of perception. Perception thus reveals itself as a special phenomenon and as something that no educator can overlook.

And yet perception, contrary to general belief, is not something natural. It must be developed and perfected, and this requires two essential elements: healthy organs and curiosity. The first of these two requirements seems obvious, but without the second, we can pass right by the most beautiful wonders of the world without perceiving them. To illustrate his point, the speaker referred to an experiment carried out by the Washington Post on January 12th, 2007. The idea was to invite Joshua Bell, one of the world’s great violin virtuosos, to perform six of the most beautiful pieces of the classical repertoire on a priceless Stradivarius violin in the Washington subway. During the 45-minute performance, of the 1097 people who passed by the performer only 7 individuals actually stopped for several moments to listen. A crowd never formed around him, and he got a total of $32.17, $20 of which were left by one single person (the only one who actually recognised the musician). Philippe Perennès wondered: “If we are able to walk right by one of the world’s great musicians playing some of the most beautiful pieces of the classical repertoire on one of the world’s finest instruments, what else do we walk right by without seeing?”

And yet, although all the children who passed through that subway station on January 12th, 2007, wanted to stop to listen to the musician play, their parents hurried them along. We see how children are born with natural curiosity and a sense of wonder for the world, something that most adults have lost.

For children to be able to connect with the world, we have to feed their curiosity and not extinguish it; and we must allow them to develop their sense organs because the encounter with the world takes place through sense perceptions. Therefore, anything that negatively affects the organs of perception must be considered counterproductive from an educational standpoint. In the last 20 years, there has been a marked increase in the number of cases of myopia all over the world, and these cases are being detected at a younger age. The blue light emitted by screens and the lack of outdoor activity have been pointed out as being at the root of this change. This is not surprising when we know that more and more children are learning to use an electronic tablet even before they learn to walk. And what about the other senses?

The effects of the migration of perceptions

Perception is our doorway to the outer world; it gives us the means to think, to understand, to react and to discover how to interact with the world. How then does the perceptual migration towards the virtual world affect our thinking, feeling and willing? Perennès asked us to consider several experiments having been carried out since the 1990’s, exploring a child’s ability to learn through the medium of television; these tests resulted in the researchers identifying what is called “video deficit.” The following is one of those experiments. The children were shown a toy that would be hidden in an adjoining room, and were then asked to find the hidden toy. As reported by Daniel R. Anderson and Tiffany A. Pempek, one group of children watched through a glass window as the toy was being hidden, while a second group watched the same thing being streamed live on a video screen. The 2-year-olds in the first group had no trouble finding the toy without having to search for it, whereas the second group of toddlers had much more difficulty in finding the toy.

Anderson and Pempek state that we do not know why this is so, and are convinced that the difficulty does not stem from the three-dimensional nature of the task of finding the toy, since the “video deficit” was also observed with regard to tests devised in a two-dimensional context. The problem is also not dependent on the visual aspect of the experiment, because similar results were discovered when verbal information was communicated to the children on where the toy was hidden: in person for one group of children and by means of closed-circuit video for the other. The children having received the information in person found the object with ease, whereas those having received the information from the same adult through the closed-circuit video could not find the toy. The authors of the study state that this does not mean that the children do not retain anything from television, but rather that the information they do receive in this way does not seem convincing enough to determine their actions when compared with information they receive from a “real” situation. Philippe Perennès sees this “video deficit” also as a “deficit of will” – a problem connected to the fact that the child is not stimulated by what he perceives because it is not transmitted directly by a human being. Rather, the transmission of the information comes through an obstacle that prevents a true relationship to be established and creates a barrier between the perceiver and what is perceived. Most research traditionally concentrates learning and memory, whereas Perennès draws our attention to the child’s activity, the enthusiasm awakened in the child through the contact and the relationship with the experiment’s creator.

And in so doing he points to a basic aspect of our relationship to media in general – the “deficit of will” that this interaction brings about. This passivity is readily observable in both adults and children, and has been studied in relationship to its physiological effects. Indeed, research on television viewing has shown that while an individual watches television there is a substantial diminution in ocular activity. This occurs because the brain falls into a state resembling that of hypnotism, the metabolism being reduced by 12 to 16 per cent, and cardiac frequency by 10 per cent. According to Reiner Patzlaff, all these factors show a “forced decrease” of energy that would normally lead to a rapid state of mental numbness resembling sleep. And this would indeed be the case if the programmes were not designed to produce just the opposite effect.8In fact, television programmes, digital media and video games are all geared to stimulate the viewer’s attention. And yet, no matter how they go about doing so, and the illusion of real participation that they create, screens destroy all possibility of personal willful involvement. The most radical example of this deficit of willis perhaps the Hikikomori, a group of young people who choose to live cut off from society and refuse any contact with the world other than through screens.

Perennès emphasises that it is perceptions that “construct what is human in us”. They buildus, allowing us to form an image of the world and thus to act. For a human being is not distinguished from other beings only by what he thinks and feels, but also by what he does; it is by his deeds that the human being engraves his history into the world of time and space. But to be able to act, the human being must learn to situate his own self with respect to the world of time and space. In this regard, the human brain is a marvellous organ, causing information to be transmitted by the senses from one region to another, thus creating wakefulness. And the more areas of the brain that are called upon, the greater the level of consciousness.

And it is thanks to our senses, to sensory perceptions, that our brain initially develops: “The network of neurons develops through our sensory experiences; it is unique, it forms intricate structures that direct, on a higher level, the brain’s development. Experience determines the shape and intricacy of these structures according to our personal activity and the circumstances of our surroundings. The richer our sensory environment, the more we are free to explore it and the greater the number of structures that will allow us to learn, to think, and to be creative.“

The transmission of information from one cerebral area to another depends on the myelinisation process, which develops only gradually and can take up to 20 years to be completed. Myelinisation is fostered by concrete activity, movement, practice and repetition, which are all things a child does naturally when not placed passively in front of a screen.

 Let us now consider two situations offered by Perennès as examples:

In the first situation, we are on a seashore. The water temperature is 260C, we gaze at the sunrise. Our senses are attracted by multiple physical sensations: the sand beneath our feet, the warmth of the water, the cool morning breeze, the pleasant warmth of the sun, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves, and the overall appearance of the landscape as it changes before our eyes.

In the second situation, we are walking down a street in a large city, and through the window of a restaurant, we notice a video of logs burning in a fireplace playing on a large screen on the restaurant wall.

When comparing the cerebral activity called up by these two different situations, explains Perennès, we can see how in the first instance the senses converse with one another, calling upon various areas of the brain, thus creating a veritable cerebral symphony. As for the second situation, what can the fire in the fireplace on the screen call up in us, what area of our brain is awakened? There is no sensation of warmth, no odour, and our sense of vision is not satisfied because we do not see the tips of the flames and there is no crackling sound; and, we get no sense of the possible danger that could be caused by the fire spreading out of control, etc. What we perceive on the screen with our eyes is not consistent with our overall sensory experience, which continues to be attracted by the actual urban surroundings in which we find ourselves.

It is through sensory perceptions that the network of neurons is formed, as well as the synapses which are located at the ends of the neurons and ensure the communication between neurons by freeing up neurotransmitters. It follows from this that a child who has the good fortune to be placed in situations where his senses are stimulated, in which he can perceive the coherence of the world around him, enjoys a brain development far superior to a child who cannot use the whole gamut of his sense perceptions.A child is changed after having taken a class or having had a sensory experience. A synaptic path has been created in his brain. This is not the case if the child has been left without proper care and the chance to enjoy sensory experiences. This is borne out by research done regarding orphanages in Rumania; children lacking care and sensory experiences showed clear developmental delays on both the physical and cognitive levels (height, weight, cranial measurement, cognitive intellectual quotient).Perennès points out that experience is formative; it moulds the brain, and children who had been deprived of sensory nourishment took years to rebuild cranial measurement and recover healthy synaptic activity. We can now ask what happens when children are deprived of human presence in their surroundings, when human interaction is replaced by robots such as the iPal (used as baby sitters in China) or Kaspar, Nao, or Leka, all robots used for care of autistic children in European and North American hospitals.

According to Philippe Perennès, the sensory question must be considered to be every bit as important as nutritional hygiene. Just as we know that we have to be mindful of what we eat, we must pay close attention to sensory nutrition, on three levels:

The qualitative aspect, for, as we have seen, not all perceptions have the same value.

The quantitative aspect, because we must give our senses a rest from time to time, just as we give our stomachs a rest between meals.

The rhythmic aspect, because proper nutrition alone is not sufficient. Rhythm is an important life factor, and it is just as important to experience hunger and boredom as it is to eat.

This concern regarding the phenomenon of perception is essential if we want to allow the child to integrate the world in the right way, but also to come into contact with his/her own self. Because, by feeding the young brain with quality perceptions, we allow the child to develop synapses, and these synapses are precisely what give the nervous system what it needs to remain open, and not closed in on itself.  As Hans-Ulrich Albonico puts it: “they provide the basis not only for the connection between thinking and perceiving, but are also essential for creative activity, for imagination.” Along the same line of thought, Rudolf Steiner maintained that wherever a nerve is interrupted, as is the case with synapses, the sentient aspect of the human being enters into contact with the supersensible, that is to say with our higher intelligence, the intelligence that allows us to receive new creative forces. Perennès asks therefore: “Do we want these fresh forces to develop in our children so that the child can connect with his higher being?”

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