The fishbowl effect

There is a glassed-in computer room in the building where I work/have classes (the amazingly large and imposing Tech, for those of your familiar with my campus). It fronts on a frequently trafficked corridor, and one can rather easily see everything going on the room. There's a small sticker on the bottom of the window: "Creative Primates: Do Not Feed".

Amusing, eh?

I've gotten to thinking, though, after seeing that room and many other like it. Have you ever noticed that people working in rooms put on display like that tend to have odd work habits? At first, they are very self-conscious, constantly noticing that everyone walking by can see them, and often glances in their direction. But amazingly quickly, they begin to completely ignore the window in question. So much so that they never even glance at it - I'd be willing to be their brains have effectively edited the window out of their consciousness. The window (and outsider's scrutiny) no longer is even acknowledged.

I've seen similar phenomena at a large University of Michigan computer room, a fossil research lab put on display in the Field Museum, and many more locales. The behavior of workers inside is amazingly uniform with respect to their observers.

Psychologists must certainly have a term for it - since I am not one of them, I'll call it the "fishbowl effect".

This observation has caused me some consternation. It is so remarkably easy for us to completely ignore certain stimuli and observations without even realizing what we are doing. Is it possible that all of humanity is currently experiencing a "fishbowl effect"? I don't want to advance alien conspiracy theories (or, for that matter, religion), but this line of thinking led me inevitably to Isaac Asimov's absolutely wonderful short story, "Jokester", and Joe Haldeman's atrocious (yet interesting) "Forever Free". Have you ever thought that we are ignoring obvious realities, like lab mice in a labyrinth?

We can quantify our world amazingly well, and much of our society is based on the assumption that observation is fact. Granted, our interpretations of our observations might be incorrect, but most of us generally accept the input that our senses receive. [Parenthetically, one might argue that some current thinking posits that observation defines reality, but let's stay away from metaphysics, philosophy, and Schrodinger for now, eh?] It seems rather possible - nay, even likely - that we all possess undetected blind spots.

Well, one might argue that if we can't identify these blind spots, why worry about them? I feel that at certain times in humanity's development, certain individuals have managed to see beyond one of those blind spots - figurative or not. Societally accepted ideas, scientific "facts", paradoxes of the world... all have been overturned by visionaries. Visionary is an interesting word - it implies that they see something we do not. Perhaps each time that someone has lifted a corner of the veil (to steal a phrase) from the mystery that is... us, and our relationship with the world around us, these visionaries have really just exercised their minds creatively to see the window that was there all along.

This doesn't really have a point; I'm just thinking. I might revise this as I think some more on it. Comments and thoughts are of course welcomed.