Context Blindness: Digital Technology and the Next Stage of Human Evolution(10 Understanding Media Ecology)

Are people with autism giving us a glimpse into our future human condition? Could we be driving our own evolution with our technology and, in fact, be witnessing the beginning of the next stage of human evolution? The thesis at the center of this book is that since we have delegated the ability to read context to contextual technologies such as social media, location, and sensors, we have become context blind. Since context blindness—or caetextia in Latin—is one of the most dominant symptoms of autistic behavior at the highest levels of the spectrum, people with autism may indeed be giving us a peek into our human condition soon. We could be witnessing the beginning of the next stage of human evolution—Homo caetextus. With increasingly frequent floods and fires and unbearably hot summers, the human footprint on our planet should be evident to all, but it is not because we are context blind. We can now see and feel global warming. We are witnessing evolution in real-time and birthing our successor species. Our great-grandchildren may be a species very distinct from us. This book is a must for all communication and media studies courses dealing with digital technology, media, culture, and society. And a general reading public concerned with the polarized public sphere, difficulties in sustaining democratic governance, rampant conspiracies, and phenomena such as cancel culture and the need for trigger warnings and safe spaces, will find it enlightening.

Table of Contents:
Preface – Acknowledgments – Introduction – That Was Then; This Is Now: Media and Decontextualized Information – New Paradigms as Premature Symptoms: Emotional Intelligence and Soft Skills – The Power of Context and The Importance of Situations – No Sense of Place: From Television to Social Media – No Sense of Context: Mobile, Data, Sensors, and Location –Delusions: Flat Earthers, Anti- vaxxers, and Global Warming Deniers High Conflict Personality (HCP): Tribalism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture – Fragility and Hypersensitivity: Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, Trauma and Anxiety – Therapy for Context- Blind Individuals: CBT, ACT, and Social Stories – Therapy for a Context- Blind Humanity: Media Ecology as Context Analysis – Index.

About the Author :
Eva Berger is Professor of Media Studies at COMAS in Israel and also serves as Secretary of the Institute of General Semantics. She is co-author of The Communication Panacea: Pediatrics and General Semantics. She holds a Ph.D. in media ecology from New York University.

Review :
“In this provocative and highly accessible book, Eva Berger identifies caetexia as a major malady of today’s times, one that bears a wide array of personal, social and political symptoms. Her abundant examples and theoretical connections allow readers to see key patterns across many different changes occurring throughout the contemporary world. In identifying context blindness as an unanticipated evolutionary consequence of digital media, Berger makes our fragmented, disconnected, and perplexing world more intelligible and more understandable. Tom Wolfe famously asked of Marshall McLuhan’s work, ‘What if he is right?’ I could not help but think along the same lines regarding Berger’s bold and sobering work here: ‘What if she is right?’” —Corey Anton, Vice-President of the Institute of General Semantics, Professor of Communication Studies, Grand Valley State University “In Context Blindness, Dr. Eva Berger presents a persuasive case that human beings, shaped by the media environments we have created, are evolving to a species that will not or cannot attend to the contexts we inhabit. Our ever-present connection to the internet that first intruded upon our sacred spaces (family dinner, classrooms, and churches) has now simply erased our understanding of how behaviors and spaces might differ. This erasure has replaced questions about what subjects and actions are appropriate in a specific context with arguments about trigger warnings and safe spaces—ultimately making no space safe. The algorithms that rule our lives are encouraging cancel culture and blinding us to the very idea of perspective. With an artful and passionate prose, Berger has issued a warning that the toxic human behaviors we are observing may be a natural selection provoked by our own inventions.”—Missy Alexander, Provost, Western Connecticut State University “This is an urgent, stirring, and relevant book. It revives media theory that has been unjustly pushed aside in the digital age and focuses on some of the most interesting challenges we face.” —Siva Vaidhyanathan, Author, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy “At once a penetrating social analysis and an eloquent lament for where we are now and where we may be headed, this book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the source of our failings and delusions. Dr. Berger presents a clear, cogent, and concise diagnosis of the ills of present-day culture, one that is essential if we are to begin to seek healing by reclaiming our real, human contexts once more.”—Douglas Rushkoff, Author, Present Shock and Team Human