What Should We Be Worried About?

THE FOURTH CULTURE

BRUCE PARKER

Visiting professor, Center for Maritime Systems, Stevens Institute of Technology; author, The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters

If Edge is the Third Culture (scientists and other thinkers communicating new ideas about the world directly to the general public), and if the rest of the scientists and the so-called literary intellectuals are the first two cultures, as proposed by C.P. Snow, then there is also another culture whose impact is growing fast enough that it can justifiably be called the Fourth Culture. This “culture” is not really new.

In the past, we would simply have called it Popular Culture and then dismissed it as a world of mostly superficial entertainment with only a certain segment of the population caught up in it (that segment not considered intellectual or influential). But now this Popular Culture is Internet-driven and global and as a result has become pervasive, and its growing influence does not allow us to dismiss it so easily.

The Internet (and its associated media/communication entities, especially cell phones and cable TV) empower the Fourth Culture. And that culture is no longer concerned only with pop music, movies, TV, and video games. It now includes religion and politics and almost everything that touches people in everyday life. It is a bottom-up “culture” with a dumbing-down effect that is likely to have repercussions.

We should be worrying about a growing dominance by the Fourth Culture and how it may directly or indirectly affect us all. Because of its communication capabilities and its appeal to people’s egos, their sexuality, prejudices, faith, dreams, and fears, the Fourth Culture can easily shape the thoughts of millions. It promotes emotion over logic, self-centeredness over open-mindedness, and entertainment value and money-making ability over truth and understanding. And for the most part it ignores science.

The primary use of the Internet is still for entertainment, but that alone is a matter of concern. As more and more of the population fills more and more hours of the day with entertainment, this leaves fewer hours for activities that promote intelligence, compassion, or interest in anything that falls outside their own Internet-dominated microcosms. When one’s “accomplishments” in life and self-image become focused on things like scoring the most kills in a video war game or being able to see one’s favorite rock star in person or having one’s favorite sports team win a game (all possible before the Internet but now carried to much greater extremes), what passion is left for the real world, for a job, or for the problems of fellow human beings? Would it be taking the point too far to suggest a parallel with the Romans, who kept the masses distracted from real-world problems by enticing them into the Colosseum to watch such spectacles as gladiators battling to the death?

The Fourth Culture is probably not a threat to science; too much money is being made from science (and its resulting technology) for science to disappear. We are not trying to improve the science and math scores of our students so we can produce more scientists. There will always be those children born with the boundless curiosity about how the world works that leads them into science or some other analytical type of work. The reason we want to do a better job of educating our children in science is to make them better citizens. Our citizens need to see the world and its problems through the eyes of science. They must be able to recognize logical approaches to problem solving and not be blinded by religious views, myths, or bogus fears promoted by opponents to a particular course of action.

Nowhere does the Fourth Culture cause more concern than in how it affects whom we select as our leaders, using a now-handicapped democratic system. How the products/results of science are used is now often in the hands of decision makers who do not understand science. Some of them think science is bad and that carefully studied and proved theories are no different than religious dogma.

We want elected officials to be intelligent people who care about doing what’s best for all the people of the nation (or the world). But elected government positions are the only jobs that have no required criteria that prospective candidates must meet, other than a minimum age and, for a president, being born in the United States. Candidates for elected office do not need to have a college degree, or success in business, or any verifiable achievements in order to be elected. They simply need to convince people to vote for them, by whatever emotional means their campaign teams can come up with. Thanks to the Fourth Culture, it has become easier to elect uninformed and even stupid candidates, through emotional manipulation in the form of appeals to religion, patriotism, class distinctions, ethnic biases, and so on (appeals fueled by huge amounts of money, of course). Sound bites and campaign ads that look like movie trailers win out over carefully thought-out logical discourse.

The press, once called the fourth branch of a democratic government because it kept the other three branches honest, is now just “the media” and has distressingly lost much, or even most, of its watchdog capabilities. In an attempt to survive financially in this Internet–dominated media world, the press has cut back newsrooms, relied more on unsubstantiated sources from the Internet, treated pop stories as news (reducing the space devoted to important stories, especially scientific stories), and allowed even the most idiotic and abusive comments to be left on their Web sites (in the name of free speech, but really to have as many comments as possible to prove to advertisers that their Web sites are popular).

We had hoped that the Internet would be a democratizing force. We had hoped that it would give everyone a voice and bring to light new ideas and new approaches to solving serious problems. To some degree it has, and it still may do a lot more. But the Internet has also given a voice to the ignorant. A voice they never had before. A loud and emotional voice. We can hope that the effects of the growing influence of the Fourth Culture do not turn out to be destructive on a large scale, but it is something worth worrying about, and it is worth looking for ways to reduce its impact. This is one more reason why expanding the Third Culture is so important.