Viewing some of my monthly subscription videos for National Geographic on YouTube, I came across a special edition National Geographic video of Dr. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University, titled “The Future of Communication”. It captured my attention from the start as he was describing his experience in Papua New Guinea. The region in PNG that he studied was extremely isolated even more so than Bougainville, the place where I grew up. It was up in the highlands and he stayed in huts without electricity. But during a 10 year period he was able to witness a transformation in PNG. This transformation occurred with the introduction of writing, leading him to understand the relationship between media and relationships; media mediate relationships and when media changes so does relationships.

Dr. Wesch studies anthropology, which is the social science that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings. With his observation of how media can alter society and social relationships, he started to study the new media landscape called Web 2.0. In short Web 2.0 is web development that focuses on two things; users and information sharing. YouTube, wikipedia, blogs, flickr, digg are just some examples of Web 2.0 applications that allow you to share videos, knowledge, information, photos and articles respectively. As more people become connected to the internet and networks become faster and more ubiquitous, Web 2.0 applications will only get more popular.

Understanding how this new media landscape will impact society will help us rethink our outdated ideas, for example current teaching methods, which is Dr. Wesch’s interest. It was while lecturing that he noticed how current teaching methods were not suitable for today’s generation. I have not seen the other videos on his class projects but basically the projects have focused on combining the knowledge of every single student in his class. This new interactivity has let in a breath of fresh air in his classes and achieved impressing results. For his innovation teaching techniques he was awarded U.S. professor of the year in 2008.

The video has made me think about the future of communication and how it will shape everyone’s lives. And to help myself understand I have made delicious, digg and twitter accounts. I can see the definite trends in today’s society; open source software, free knowledge, applications that allow human interactivity, increased connectivity and faster network connections. If a collection of 200 undergraduates can develop ground breaking research, imagine the power of combining the minds of the world. The most popular sites on the web are the ones promoting interactivity; facebook, myspace, wikipedia, file sharing sites, etc. The most popular games are MMORPGs such as WoW. I think Dr. Wesch was right on the future, we will only see an increase in interactivity and faster connections to the internet, which will allow everyone to be connected to everyone instantly. Good or bad? No idea but it will definitely be very interesting.

So I just finished watching part two of Dead Tired, a documentary on sleep that first aired on SBS last week Wednesday, which was a serendipitous find as I was just channel flicking. Part two of the series dealt with insomnia and how it is also associated with depression, anxiety, hormone levels and medication. I was particularly interested in this documentary as I have recently developed a very poor sleep habit and sometimes suffer from insomnia. One of the explanations for insomnia is that people suffering from insomnia have a deficiency in the hormone (melatonin), which helps switch off parts of the brain so that you can get to sleep. One condition that affects the level of melatonin is anxiety, which leads to higher levels of cortisol affecting the production of melatonin. Actually cortisol is referred to as the “stress hormone” as its levels increase in response to stress and anxiety. Coming back to the topic of melatonin switching off the brain, now I understand what people mean when they say that they can’t switch off their brains when they suffer from insomnia. Several solutions were offered and discussed, such as consultation with a specialist, taking medication and yoga. It seemed that the most effective way to curing anxiety caused insomnia was yoga, where regular exercise helped regulate a normal breathing pattern and slower pulse thus lowering anxiety.

Another segment of the documentary dealt with our biological clock and the circadian cycle. Our bodies are actually synchronised with the circadian cycle (24hr), which helps explain the concept of jet lag since we need time to adjust to the new time zone. Our biological clocks determine when we become tired and hence it is very important to maintain a biological clock that is in sync with the 24 hour clock. Interestingly, it was shown how 11 and 13 year old children have altered biological clocks due to the hormones present in the body at those respective ages. An eleven year old would sleep at 9pm and wake up around 7am. However there is a 2 hour delay in a thirteen year old, and consequently they sleep at 11pm and wake up around 9am, which would make waking up for school very difficult. A bright light therapy was described in the documentary where a shining light was used to help reset a person’s biological clock, since our bodies actually use light as a stimulus to synchronise our biological clocks.

I am glad that I was able to catch the documentary showing as it will definitely make me think about my own sleeping patterns and how sleep isn’t as disposable as I make it to be. Time to sleep on it