(Credit:
The Atlantic)
It's not yet on the Web, but In the the July issue, The Atlantic has an exceptional and provocative article by Nick Carr, asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" It's a riff on Carr's book, The Big Switch (reviewed here), but covers new ground and has me worried. Carr writes:
The human brain is almost infinitely malleable...James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind "is very plastic...The brain...has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions."
As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our "intellectual technologies"--the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities--we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.
"Excellent!" you say, "Now I'll be able to retrieve an infinite amount of information, like Google." Maybe. Or maybe our ability to retain and process information will continue to dwindle. Remember books? Those were the things we read before e-mail, Web browsing, and Twitter came on the scene.
Speaking of Twitter, am I the only one who views it as further evidence of a soundbite culture that struggles even to think beyond 140-character blips?
... Read moreI was just reading Phil Windley's exposition on why he's dumping Facebook for Twitter. No big loss for him, as both of the "services" reek of potty: He simply chose the lesser of two noisy and vapid "conversations." It's like choosing between brands of puffed rice.
People like Phil love Twitter because it gives immediate, to the point information. People like me hate it for almost exactly the same reason. I want real information, real thinking. I don't want soundbites that serve as excuses for real thought.
I choose my literature in the same way. I prefer books that stand the test of time to become classics. Dostoevsky. Dickens. Dreiser. I'm not very interested in Archie comics. Not anymore.
SMS and other short-form messaging systems have their purpose, but anyone hoping to subsist on Twitter's "Wonderbread" nutrition needs to reevaluate their ongoing education. The best ideas emerge from the best thinking, and the best thinking doesn't take place in 140-character bursts. We're entering an age where we seem to have shorter and shorter attention spans. The way to beat that is not by succumbing, but rather by training ourselves through real reading.
Because of Twitter, Phil knows that there were tornadoes today in Laramie and Denver. Because of real literature and yes, even blogs, he might actually know what to do about them.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is perhaps my favorite book of all time (with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Twain's Huckleberry Finn pressuring from behind). As with nearly all of my favorite books, it doesn't pull punches. There are happy endings in Dostoevsky's books, but not outwardly happy. Raskolnikov, the "superman" protagonist of Crime and Punishment ends up in a Siberian prison but is redeemed inwardly. That is Dostoevsky's genius.
As I was re-reading Crime and Punishment this week, I came across this fantastic passage:
"I don't believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.
Svidrigaïlov sat lost in thought.
"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort," he said suddenly.
... Read more
Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her acceptance speech clamors for depth in our discussions. The very fact that TechCrunch - king of the tech soundbite - dissed it is testament enough of the veracity of her words.
We live in a very shallow culture. I feel this in just a small way with my posts. If I want maximum pageviews I say something shallow but controversial about Apple, Microsoft, or Google. A post about the iPod - any post - will garner more attention than a post probing Oracle's licensing model and what it may mean for enterprises. (Dan Farber notes this same phenomenon in discussing coverage of enterprise versus consumer software.)
Today on the Tube in London I noticed that no one was reading the Independent, Guardian, or Times. Just Metro because it's free and easy.
Against this backdrop, Ms. Lessing's counsel seems appropriate and biting:
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.
... Read more
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