Through the agency of using computers on a daily basis, your brain is being rewired. The neural channels are being reordered as never before. I grew up learning from books, texts. I only play with computers, but it is all the same words. That analogue patterning perceives the word in pieces and then you put it together.

This activity in civilization was mostly associated with males. Since the introduction of linear reading and written language, it become male dominated and patriarchal.

Conversely, what is happening now through the extensive use of internet technology, you are now dealing with images, not just parts of a image. It draws from the right hemisphere. You learn to manipulate space, outer space, inner space, geographic space and archtectonic space. And how you deal with music.

The right hemisphere learning deals with wholes, in terms of thinking, seeing. This deals with nuturance. This is providing a female, yin, learning activity. All men and all women have these components of learning. But schools emphasize mostly reading, writing and arithmatic.

All other intelligences are not emphasized, whether the arts, music, or emotional capacities. But there is a major revolution going on now through an Iconic Revolution.

Since the development of film, television, computer graphics, virtual reality or now who know what, more and more information is being encoded in images. You are going to have more and more right brain energy interpreting that.

When you read any text, you use light view it. There is ambiant light that bounces onto a page, and then into your eye. You are then able to decode the text into meanings. That is the use of reflected light. There is a theory that this light allows the left-hemisphere of the brain to operate.

There is another way to deal with light, when you watch a television or interactive computer screen. You are not dealing with reflective light, but emitted light. Your neuro-physiology of perception, the way our anatomy interprets it is by the right-brain hemisphere. You deal with that through alpha and theta brain waves.

This gives you a different perception, a different experience. To use the jargon of Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. It not only the context of what you are seeing, but what you are seeing.

Our goal as religious futurists is to understand this and use this for the best advantage of building the spiritual civilizations of tomorrow.

References:
McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message. New York: Random House.

Logan, R. K. (1986). The alphabet effect: The impact of the phonetic alphabet on the development of western civilization. New York: Morrow.

Shlain, L. (1998). The alphabet versus the goddess: The conflict between word and image. New York: Viking.