Evolution and ‘Pod People’

I don’t do podcasts (yet) but I might have to start — both as personal entertainment AND as education research. Will podcasts turn our kids into “pod people?” A stretch perhaps, but not so far-fetched as Darwin’s Radio, which wasn’t that far-fetched itself when you think about it.

If culture changes like the Internet can actually change individual brains, those changes will in turn change institutions and obsolesce the ones it can’t –this morning I heard NPR guests discussing the extreme need for institutional change by Congress, the Supreme Court, and our whole system of governance (presumably schools too, hey! See if you can check it out on a podcast.) As our population hits 300 million this month, each Senator represents 3 million of us. How well represented does that make you feel as an individual? No WONDER government institutions are foundering and as individuals, we’re mad as hell, not gonna take it any more. Mucho maladaptations that can’t be helped just by changing the color scheme of the decor from red to blue, or back again . . .

And when I say institutional change, I mean overhaul if not revolution. Actual progress forward, not deck-chair dithering, and I mean all institutional aspects of life. Schooling and universities of course, but also everything from the Fourth Estate to business, government, parenting, marriage, travel, family, economy, you name it.
I am old, old enough at least to have been through Dr. Jane Healy’s published alarm way back in the last century, about TV like Sesame Street rewiring kids’ brains.
If she’s still alive, what threat level do you suppose her brain is flashing now?