Brain Overload: The Threat of Cranial Overblosis

It could be the evil confluence of two graph lines. One line represents "room left in brain". The other represents "data input". Result: Overblosis of the cranial cavity, otherwise known as Brain Overload.

Having lived my life as a baby boomer, the demographic group which has been the obsession of unprecedented hoardes of marketing focus groups, I already know that when I fart, so do a hundred thousand of my contemporaries.

Therefore, I know as a fact, that any minute the news will be filled with breathless (but well groomed) news anchors reporting frightening instances of spontaneous and messy brain explosions spreading across the country.

It is understandable that 50+ year old brain cells would fatigue, longing for a simple graze in the pasture. Munching in a sunny field of grass is a refreshing image, soothing to black-and-blue gray matter.

But our environment isn't cooperating. Instead of grassy fields, our psyche is jabbed, stabbed and generally invaded with gigabytes of decidedly non-grassy input, and we are not built for it.

Eisenstein's Montage

  Sergei Eisenstein exhibiting Cranial Overblosis symptoms->

It started with Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein about 90 years ago. This visionary Russian cinematographer theorized that people could understand a succession of unrelated images and assimilate these images into a unified impression.

His well studied "Odessa steps" sequence in the 1925 film Battleship Potemkin demonstrates this then-radical psycho-perceptual phenomenon which is now found in nearly every movie, television show and especially every TV commercial currently attacking your eyes.

This frenetic moving slideshow on steroids is called the montage.

Eisenstein was kinder than our current batch of Attention-Deficit-Disorder-afflicted film editors. He gave the audience a good solid few seconds to absorb, for example, the image of the stressed-out dude in the round glasses before cutting to the image of the rifle-wielding Cossacks.

In current cinematic language, a few seconds per shot is enough to get the editor fired for sleeping at the Avid. Visual images are now measured in increments of 1/24 of a second, the smallest increment available because movies pour 24 images every second into our heads.

The Impression of Motion

On one hand, 24 frames per second gives us the impression of smooth motion. The image persists in our consciousness for enough time to blend into the next one. Thank the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison for creating devices which fool our minds into inferring motion from a succession of still images.

As soon as flashing images were invented, however, people began experimenting with the number of frames which are actually necessary to convey information.

Subliminal Messages

The underworld of this group postulated that one could plant subtle "subliminal" messages into the viewer's brain by flashing, for example, only one frame of a specific message within the movie.

In their hopeful minds, by displaying 1/24 of a second of "Eat Popcorn" or "Start Orgy Now", flocks of brain-controlled zombies would obediently rush either the snack counter or each other without a second thought.

Thankfully for our waistlines and our population control, these ideas turned out to be unfulfilled. This makes sense. Why would a viewer select 1 particular frame out of 175,000 in a typical movie (including previews) for obeisance?

Shell-Shocking the Audience

Now film editors tread in the conscious realm, stingily feeding us just enough frames to convey flash impressions, then moving on to flash again. Their inspiration started with Eisenstein but ended with the strobe light. What we endure at the cinema would induce an epileptic seizure in Eisenstein.

The public undoubtedly gobbles up these machine-gun images, or they wouldn't exist. Hyper-montages make visual media exciting.

But each movie force-feeds terabytes of data into our scull-restricted heads. Doesn't data require space? Even if, as neuro-psychologists tell us, gaining knowledge involves the building of neural connections within the brain, don't these neurons take up space?

More Brain Barrage

It's not just TV and the movies. We are bombarded by thousands of emails, cell phone calls and text messages. We are zetzed from resting states by pings, dings, rings and beeps all day long, every day.

No wonder we can't hold a train of thought beyond two sentences of a conversation.

No wonder we resemble rats being randomly shocked in a Skinner Box, trying to find reason and predictability among zaps of random chaos.

I don't know about you, but I'm wearing a hat in case my brain explodes.

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This article is dedicated to Solomon Weingarten who shall remain nameless.

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Mark Meshulam offers
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small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
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Language: The Structure of Thought

I have the unique experience of having been romantically involved with (or married to) three teachers of the deaf. Not all at the same time, mind you, like some sign language convention gone primal, but stretched out over almost 20 years of my life.

I have never understood the reason for this, and probably never will. But being exposed to people who spend their lives bringing language to those who can't hear has given me the the inspiration and understanding which I will share now with you.

If I were to choose the worst sense to lose, personally I would choose the sense of vision. To me, not being able to see would be a true horror.

My teachers of the deaf tell me otherwise. They say that for a child unable to hear spoken language, actual brain development is impaired. Why? Because language is the structure of thought.

A World Without Sound

Imagine being someone who has never heard a sound. Your brain is filled with visual information, but how do you organize it?

Some things are easy. One day you see a brick wall, the next day you see a drywall wall. You eventually notice that they are similar. They separate spaces. They protect us. We can't walk through them. They look different but in many ways they are the same.

If you were never able to hear the word "wall", or any word for that matter, your mind might, or might not, develop an internal impression which would represent the general class of things you can't walk through.

Here is where a word would come in very handy. If you could hear sound, you could easily attach the two wall experiences with a common sound. That sound is a word. A single syllable can become a quick abbreviation for the commonality between a collection of full fidelity visual and tactile impressions.

Think Google. You can enter any word or phrase into the search bar, and Google will dump piles of information in your lap, all organized around a few typed characters. What then, if characters or words don't exist? How do you tell the computer what to retrieve?

Even Google Images requires a word in order to retrieve the image. No word, no information.

Words Are Symbols

Words, then, are symbols. They represent real-world things in an easy way. They help us organize our information. They allow us to create cubbyholes so we can store similar or related ideas. They help us see that some things are parts of other things rather than standing alone.

Here is a definition of knowledge, from Wikipedia:

"Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value."

The stepping stone between knowing isolated details and appreciating the richness of interconnection, is words.

Most four year olds have accumulated hundreds of words which have helped them assimilate the world around them in an organized way. Every day these wildly fertile minds connect things internally through play and life, creating a mushrooming web of knowledge and understanding.

The rapidly expanding web of understanding is a multi-media experience. A visual impression connects with a tactile impression, which connects with an audio impression, which connects with a tangible result, which gets filed away with words and sounds. Take away the words and sounds, and you have a crippled filing system.

Concepts

There is a world beyond, and more complex than the organization of tangible things. This is the world of concepts. I like this definition of a concept from the University of Washington:

A concept is an abstraction or symbol that represents similarities or common characteristics in phenomena.

A phenomenon, according to Princeton University, is any state or process known through the senses....

One might infer that a word, therefore is a concept, because it is a symbol representing commonality in observed things. I say yes, in its simplest form, but there is more.

First comes the word abstraction. Again, per Princeton, an abstraction is the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances. Sounds circular, no?

The key in all of this, is that a more complex concepts involves creating or abstracting commonalities between states, processes or instances.

This is far beyond walls. This can describe the intricacies of everyday life, and the most intricate of all, interaction with people. Try to formulate logical deductions without words. It won't happen. Try to share complex nuances of feelings without words. Very tough.

Words in Business

Business transactions are deals built upon presumed understandings. Parties trade things in exchange for other things. Each party represents their offering to the other party using words.

Are the words that you use clear? Do they precisely express your intentions and expectations in business agreements? If not, crisp them up. Words are not only the the building blocks of knowledge, but are fundamental in trade.


Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com