A fascinating discussion has broken out in the comments to my earlier post, A beautiful mindlessness. I recommend reading it, and adding to it, if you’re interested in the effect of the web on cognition and intelligence.
Elsewhere, there are some related posts of note. The Leading Wedge writes of:
[a] situation I have been aware of for several years now. I keep telling myself that it is time to sit down and to start coming up with my own judgements and thoughts, but I keep putting it off because I learn something new by reading the constant flows of others’ opinions and the “news” on the Internet.
Yes, distraction does seem to be the currency of the web, and it’s intoxicating.
Tim Bray, after dutifully dismissing the critics of the internet’s “atomized information,” gets around to being a critic himself:
It doesn’t bother me that much of the prose I read these days has an age measured in hours, or is evanescent electronic text, or is produced by principals rather than intermediaries. But here’s what I’m coming to think: in text, short form tends to drive out long form. Our novelty-seeking chimpanzee minds would rather chew through a bunch of tasty little morsels than a full balanced meal.
I find references to “chimpanzee minds” and “mammalian brains” and the like to be offensive, lazy and stupid, but I think Bray makes a very good point. The more we suck in information from the blogosphere or the web in general, the more we tune our minds to brief bursts of input. It becomes harder to muster the concentration required to read books or lengthy articles – or to follow the flow of dense or complex arguments in general. Haven’t you, dear blog reader, noticed that, too?
Loryn at growstate writes:
Technology may change our intellectual environment, but doesn’t govern our behavior. We choose how we adapt. We choose our objectives and data sources and whether we challenge our assumptions. We choose on what to focus. We can choose.
I would agree that technology doesn’t take away our individual free will, but I would strongly disagree that technology doesn’t heavily influence, and in many cases even govern, our collective behavior. Of course it does. And in providing the context in which we “choose our objectives and data sources and whether we challenge our assumptions,” it can, and I think does, influence how we think. Adaptation does not always involve conscious choice.
Finally, Bill de Hora, after praising my “calculated cynical faux-Ludditism,” says, “Watching Carr criticize, undermine and attempt to devalue IT technology, particulary web technology, while doing so using web technology is so wonderfully ironically dissonant.” What can I say? I cheerfully confess to being part of the problem.
“It becomes harder to muster the concentration required to read books or lengthy articles”
I don’t see evidence for that. I find the opposite just as plausible: that the ability to zoom into focus to read a few paragraphs and then context switch to another author — or another topic — flexes many of the same mental muscles necessary to read a journal article. *Serious* reading of the blogosphere is actually quite exhausting, don’t you think? Even if — no, *especially* if you’re speeding up when you hit a patch of noise, in order to mine for that one worthy sentence fragment. That’s not a high school level reading skill.
This “mindlessness” discussion is sealed in nice, neat, existential doggy bag. Expose this content to the political environment and suddenly it’s useful: you can sell a war to “mindless” Americans and make a profit. Oops! Let’s put it back in the bag again so we can sound measured and balanced—but strangely not independently wealthy. What are the “real” benefits of this little doggy bag?
“I find references to ‘chimpanzee minds’ and ‘mammalian brains’ and the like to be offensive, lazy and stupid…”
But you do consider the ability to construct metaphor an element of intelligence. In as much as this one treads the line between evolutionary psychology and metaphor, I’m left to wonder whether our tendencies toward offensive, lazy stupidity resulted from our latest technology or if we brought it with us from back in our eating-ants-from-a-stick days.
S Beach: You’re getting a little too deep into that existential doggy bag.
I find this thread very similar to the things Neil Postman was writing about.
The medium is the metaphor.
The short bursts of information influence what we view as a convincing argument. Witness the 24 hour news channels and the blogosphere. Longer detailed arguments are not best presented in this medium – reinforcing currently held beliefs are.
This has both benefits (as mentioned in the prior post – no more information scarcity) and drawbacks (less patience for complex arguments).
I suspect that for most people, the primary activity displaced by Web surfing is not serious, in-depth reading, but television watching.
I love reading books and magazines! especially the paper kind! I also love the web, because at anytime of the day, I can log on, and be entranced by the brilliance one moment and complete idiocy the next. That’s what makes it so much fun!!
Doug has hit the nail on the head – online news, Wikipedia and the entirety of the blogosphere is just Idiot-box 2.0. Plus ca change.
Two things come to mind here.
Firstly.
Hugh of the gapingvoid blog posted a cartoon this week about Tiger Tiger, the William Blake poem.
20 years ago, as a shy undergrad politics and english lit student, the ability to recite the said poem after a couple of beers enabled me to catch the attention of a girl at a party.
We have been married for the last 10 years.
Hugh’s blog reminded me of the significance of that poem. Without it, I wouldn’t have met her.
Blogs and literature (and other “serious” writing) don’t have to be “an either or.” A good blog can remind or introduce things you ought to read with deliberation. Hugh’s cartoon doesn’t replace Blake, but it probably made several people reread the poem. Whether you stop blogging long enough to pick up the poetry anthology is up to you.
Secondly.
Book yourself on a speed reading course. Life is too short to read crap or trivia slowly. Save the contemplative stuff for reading Blake.
“The more we suck in information from the blogosphere or the web in general, the more we tune our minds to brief bursts of input. It becomes harder to muster the concentration required to read books or lengthy articles – or to follow the flow of dense or complex arguments in general. Haven’t you, dear blog reader, noticed that, too?”
Reminds me of the breakup of the huge Mozilla browswer. Using Mozilla was a meme (learned action) that required the concentration to put up with one program’s unified web/mail/calendar/composer/etc. A different design philosophy rose up, however, which tore Mozilla into pieces (Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird/etc.) Each of these smaller memes now competes on their own, is more open to evolutionary pressures, is less feather-bedded, and thus stronger.
People are reading more crap and thinking less about it, yes. But more people are also reading more words; I’d say that’s better than not reading at all.
A certain subset of people would have been reading anyway 30 years ago, and they’d probably have been spending more time reading great books than they do today. But the rest of the people who are spending hours in front of their screens today probably wouldn’t have read more than one or two mass market paperbacks per year 30 years ago.
That’s progress to me.