Food for thought... deep thought?

[mamagotcha]

I tripped over this article recently... an essay looking at what we might be losing as we become Internet people.

I'd like my kids, in particular, to read it, but I'd also appreciate hearing what some of my NPL peeps think (and do you think the rest of the Krewe would be interested in seeing it?).

I'm trying not to color this post with what I think about the writer's suggestions, but I do want to explore them in a future post...

Thanks, gang.

Comments

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

I lost patience after about four paragraphs.

[nplloquacious.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose the proof is in the reading. I started to drift about half way through. I've also noticed that I stopped reading books many years ago and greatly prefer short stories, graphic novels, and visual (movies, TV) input to "reading a book."

I fall into the camp of computer-users for more than 25 years now. I also tend to go with new ideas, technological or otherwise, because it's interesting. I'm not afraid if reading dies out. Other things will take its place, the size and shape of which I cannot even imagine (which is why I work at a day job and don't make the big bucks, I suppose.)

I found a new search engine recently that is a major shift from what we've seen so far: searchme.com. Give it a look and let me know what you think. As a visual thinker, it has my attention.

Thanks for the link! ;-)

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

Oh, that "searchme" thing is very nice indeed.

I dislike the black background (shrug) and it assumes a nice fast connection. But what is does is VARY kool.

Thankyou.

[nplloquacious.livejournal.com]

Black background... yes, it's so... you know.

:-)

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I can't stay focused on long web articles.

However, I have no problem with novels or non-fiction books.

I think it's a medium thing; hence, I am not getting a kindle.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I'd like to comment on the article, but I just can't seem to stay focused long enough to read it.

Having only skimmed a bit of it, I have to echo Hathor's sentiments, that it's a matter of medium. If I print out the article, I'll have a much easier time reading it. Can't explain why -- does it have to do with scrolling, or eye strain, or something else?

As for how we're fed information: I do find myself frustrated sometimes when I'm away from the Internet and I want to know the answer to a question that could be answered trivially by looking it up online. And I also think that people get a lot more information than they need by spending time poking about the Internet. However, I don't think either of these phenomena is inherently negative.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

The actual magazine is no doubt at a library near you. (and someone left a copy behind in the ringing room at Old North. Maybe it's time to start ringing...)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that subtle hint. :)
Miss you at Squares.

Only possible response...

[2006in2006.livejournal.com]

TL;DR

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Two observations from the perspective of someone, at 58, its getting sneak previews of the frailties of aging:
1. While I do avoid long pieces of print writing, it's because of my eyesight, not my Internet use. I miss books, and am considering getting an e-reader. In the meantime, the Internet is the only thing that *lets* me read books - including the full-length novels being distributed this week by Tor.com, free of charge - because I can zoom up the text size.
2. Google makes me smarter than I really am. If I had the ability to jack it into my skull, I would.

There are things wrong with the world and the culture I live in. The Internet, in my considered opinion, is not one of them.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

the article was too long for me to read in its entirety...

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

My usual response to cover articles in the Atlantic is to wait a couple of months, read the letters to the editor in response, and then read the article if it seems to have been a good one. We stopped subscribing because I found too many of the cover articles unconvincing.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I admit I lost interest partway through (and yes, I get the irony; I wonder whether he deliberately wrote as boringly as possible in order to get people to drift off and then think "hey maybe he's right").

I skimmed the rest; and ultimately my feeling is that a few paragraphs at the end that say "this may sound alarmist, and sure it's been said about every other technological advance ever, but I think I'm right about this" don't really suffice to change the fact that it sounds alarmist and has been said about every other technological advance ever.

[1firefly.livejournal.com]

I thought you were going to cut your web time?

[eub.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is a dismissive "so maybe you've stopped reading books, so what does that tell us." But that's not entirely fair. It's certainly plausible that Internet use substitutes for reading books, and I think I'd agree that it tilts towards a different cognitive style. So let's keep reading.

Eh, this section about Google is purely tendentious. "What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind" -- piffle. Google has next to no expertise in that direction; Carr would do better to tilt at David Allen.

Ah, he did mention the Phaedrus bit on the evils of the invention of writing -- I was reminded of that. I think, like tahnan, that saying "I may be wrong" doesn't make Carr look any less likely to be wrong. He has an interesting point, thought, that critics of new media can be absolutely right as far as they go, about what the new medium does poorly, but still miss the real effect, of what is new in it.

So then, what is Carr missing? I think perhaps two things:

Social reading leads to active reading. To move beyond passive absorption of material might be the biggest single step in the education of a reader. We need it in order to have any thoughtful response to the work, to bring it into our mental lives, to think critically -- all of which Carr is saying online reading disfavors. But maybe it's the opposite. Online reading is reading of a text that you are accustomed to wiki-edit, or comment on, or post a reply on your blog with a link. And this is characteristic of online text, isn't it, that it's about or because of other online text? Too directly and too easily about and because of, you might argue, pointing at kneejerk responses and thoughtless flamewars. But 90% of everything is crap, and maybe the crap ratio does even go up as responsive reading broadens from educated essayists to everybody -- but we get more of it, and more in total that's valuable.

Breadth has power. Carr refers to a study suggesting that online we read "horizontally" instead of vertically, snippets from multiple sources rather than the entirety of a single source. And then a non sequitur: he goes on to worry we're "merely decoding", losing the ability to read deeply and to interpret. But what do we suppose these readers of horizontal texts are doing? Aren't they synthesizing their multiple sources?

Seeing and synthesizing relevant sections of multiple sources is a powerful thing. You can get a sketch of what is agreed on and what is not, and what the opinions are. The breadth of what's out there in the world can be truly eye-opening. I claim there is nothing wrong with a horizontal text as such -- a search result, or a purposeful crawl of hyperlinked documents. Now, you can enumerate all the things wrong with our current horizontal texts -- one can miss finding whole areas, our tools have no understanding of the material, all of the books in the world are left out -- but if you want to look at where the new medium leads, squinting past the flaws is the best bet.

(This did get long -- I trust it's readable online.)

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

Quite readable, and exactly the kind of response I was hoping to generate.

I still plan to revisit this in a future post, but for now: thank you for your ideas.