'Men, Women & Children' examines lives led online

"Men, Women & Children," a chilling chronicle of the Internet's impact on society, opened the Twin Cities Film Fest on Thursday night. In one of many resonant scenes, a wide-angle overhead shot shows students and some educators thronging a hallway. As the camera pans high above them, our modern-day Babel — bubbles of text messages — appears. The cellphone cacophony suggests that while many may be shuffling to class along with friends, most are engaging with someone else. It's a scene that's concurrently disconcerting and familiar. Because outside of sanctuaries, be they houses of worship or cathedrals of nature, screen-reading is seen nearly everywhere.

With luck, and a little common sense, few will face the fates of the men, women and children in the film, whose social disconnection — despite or because of this interconnected age — leads to trouble and even tragedy. But the themes will get the chattering class talking (and tweeting, no doubt), because the movie may make some wonder just how quickly, and completely, society has been shaped by digital devices.

After all, it wasn't long ago that the Internet was widely referred to as "new media." Sure, it seems old-hat now, but digital ubiquity is just a generation old, and smartphones are even more recent. The rapid adaptation of individual digital devices suggests a durable behavioral shift. What's striking is how untested the impact is, or will be. It's like a massive sociological experiment, with a sample size of, well, everybody.

And it's not just individuals, but institutions that are altered. Two Pew Research Center studies issued last week, for instance, showed how new media are "reshaping" news and how "the age of gigabit connectivity is dawning and will advance in coming years."

Social media can act as a "pathway" to news, Pew reported. Facebook, for instance, is used by 64 percent of adults; 30 percent "get news" from the site. Twitter is used by 16 percent of adults, with 8 percent getting news via tweet. YouTube users, conversely, convert at a lower rate — 51 percent use the site, but only 10 percent report getting news from it.

Of those using social networks, half have shared or reposted news stories, images or videos, and 46 percent have discussed a news issue or event.

Of course, "news" can be broadly defined. Asked what kind of news they saw, 73 percent cited "entertainment." Only 39 percent said "international news," despite the dominance of datelines from the Mideast, Eastern Europe and West Africa in recent stories.

Regardless of whether we're willing, we'll soon be able to do much more online, according to Pew's gigabit analysis. Advances in augmented reality, for instance. Other themes the study explores include: "People's basic interactions and their ability to 'be together' and collaborate will engage in the age of vivid telepresence — enabling people to instantly 'meet face-to-face' in cyberspace with no travel necessary." What's more, "The connection between humans and technology will tighten as machines gather, assess and display real-time personalized information in an 'always-on' environment. This integration will affect many activities — including thinking, the documentation of events (life logging) and coordination of daily schedules."

Always-on can be an asset, however, particularly if it encourages constructive behavior like health reminders. "Pervasive is persuasive," said David Rose, author of "Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things." Rose, an instructor at the MIT Media Lab who has appeared on "The Daily Show" and in the New York Times, among other outlets, was in town Tuesday to talk on a contextual marketing panel organized by U.S. Bank and marketing agency Gage. In an interview, he acknowledged how smartphones, which work like digital Swiss Army Knives, can overwhelm.

"The Internet of Things is the only way out of how much smartphones are monopolizing our attention," Rose said. "The way out of our blue-faced world is to start to spread information outside of the screen and into devices that are more single purpose."

More devices may seem a counterintuitive escape route. But Rose believes that today's tools will be replaced by a revised new media era.

"Phones as prolific as they are now — think about it as an awkward state of adolescence," Rose said. "Ten years from now, we'll tell our kids we all thought the phones were going to be the remote control of your life, but really it turned out much broader than that and much more humane."