How to keep Google from making us stupid
Open blog — your comments requested!
I want to open up the Citizendium blog to general discussion of an important topic: how can we keep Google (and the larger Internet) from “making us stupid”? I solicit your ideas. Click on “Comments,” or scroll down to the bottom, and share them!
First, some background, which you can read or not.
Earlier today I was on a KQED panel discussion with Kevin Kelly and in the last few minutes Nicholas Carr, about Carr’s essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr’s answer: yep. His thesis, in a nutshell, is that the vast quantities of information online lead us to sample everything, atrophying our ability to read long texts and with it, our ability to follow long, complex arguments and narratives. The result, he says, is that we are losing not just the taste for but the ability to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example. As many people reading this blog know, there have been two very interesting discussions of the article, first on Edge.org, and then on the Britannica Blog (where the discussion is actually still going on), both featuring some of the leading “digerati.” Plainly, Carr has described an interesting and pressing problem, one on many people’s minds.
In the radio discussion, Carr maintained that there was basically nothing we could do about the ongoing and worsening dumbing-down of our civilization. I find his pessimism depressing and fatalistic. As I pointed out on Edge.org, if we cannot focus well enough to read difficult books and take deep ideas on board, this is a self-created state:
But ultimately we have no one to blame but ourselves for this. If some of us no longer seem to be able to read a book all the way through, it isn’t because of Google or the vast quantity of information on the Internet. To say that is to buy into a sort of determinism that ultimately denies the very thing that makes us most human and arguably gives us our dignity: our ability to think things through, particularly in depth, in a way that can lead to our changing our minds in deep ways.
It is ridiculous to bemoan a state which is self-created; that is a sign of weakness of will, of indiscipline, not of victimhood. Carr actually blames it on “computer engineers and software coders” who build things like Google—which is silly. Indeed, to that extent, Carr profoundly misunderstands the nature of the problem: to pretend that you can blame others (programmers, no less!) for your unwillingness to think long and hard is only a sign of how the problem itself resides within you. It is ultimately a problem of will, a failure to choose to think. If that is a problem of yours, you have no one to blame for it but yourself.
In the radio program, I pointed out that if Carr were right — if future generations were no longer able to read long, difficult texts — that would mean the end of liberal education. I elaborated the point in ”The Internet and the Future of Civilization“ (lightly revised and reposted on the Britannica Blog), where I say:
My concern is not “nostalgic,” of course—why would it be? To say so assumes, first of all, that the Great Books (not just Tolstoy of course) are in fact passé, that we have somehow “moved on” from them. But nobody has established that, not in the slightest way. More importantly, nobody has here clarified in what sense the Internet poses any sort of threat to how we value the Great Books—other than that we might have to rouse ourselves a little if we want to read them. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with nostalgia or with silly romanticization of a novel-gobbling past. It has to do with a proper valuation of human minds and of what they have produced, both individually and in the aggregate, from around the world and from the dawn of recorded history until the present. If someone really did want to dismiss the power and interest of individual human minds and what they are capable of producing as somehow passé, he would thereby do away with all those great books, and the strange, ever-conflicted, varied culture that resulted from them, and I suppose replace them with the Borg. You will be assimilated; resistance is futile. Right? It’s techno-socially determined. You can’t do anything about it.
Does anybody in this debate really believe that Web 2.0 spells the end of the Great Books and of liberal education, and its entire replacement by the productions of undifferentiated “crowds”?
Surely nobody really believes that, or even anything like it. I do wonder, of course, what the perceived merits of the Great Books and liberal education will be, once we have gone through the massive societal transformation that, I fully agree, the Internet is bringing us. I would like to point out that if we do give up the foundations of Western civilization, indeed the written records of all civilizations, and if we give up even any pretension to having become acquainted with those records, we give up a very great deal.
The prospect is nothing short of horrifying. It would be quite literally the death of civilization as we have known it. That means all the good parts as well as the bad. It essentially would herald not a bright new world, cleaned of bad old influences, but very probably a new dark age. After all, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
I frankly cannot grok why Carr (and Clay Shirky) would claim that we are losing the ability to read extended prose, and come to grips with deep, complex thoughts produced by individual minds, and apparently not realize that losing those abilities entails the downfall of civilization.
But then, I don’t think civilization is about to collapse because of the Internet, but quite the reverse; I am not at all persuaded of Carr’s pessimism. As I concluded earlier,
I should also state (apparently, it’s necessary) that I am not opposed to Web 2.0. If you know me, you’ll realize this is just silly. I just have a different idea about what direction we should take, that’s all. (For some clues, see 1, 2, 3, and 4.) I am much more optimistic about the prospects of the Internet and what it means for human civilization. I think it will enhance liberal education as never before, and more likely to usher in a new enlightenment than to cause the death of civilization.
Well, now I finally come to the point. Even if you agree with me that our ability to read and think deeply will not necessarily be utterly ruined by the Internet, you might still admit — as I do — that Carr is on to something.
Here are a few observations:
- Our attention span is naturally shortened if we spend our time hopping from item to item online.
- Many of us report that we’re more easily distracted now. (I admit it, but I’m not proud of it and I think I can improve.)
- A lot of what is “happening” occurs online, not in professionally published books, journals, or magazines.
- There is far more out there that we want to read than we possibly can read. So we tend to skim and read superficially, not thoughtfully.
- The classics have no constituency online. Tolstoy isn’t in the blog ranking. Dickens doesn’t appear atop digg.com. Newton and Leibniz aren’t going to be Slashdotted.
All of this would diminish our appreciation for the best thoughts of the best minds in history. It also would sap our continuing acquaintance with those minds by making them harder to grasp (well, if you believe Carr — your mileage may vary), and certainly less exciting and immediately relevant than the latest blog post or news article coming down the pike. These effects would in turn make it harder to give our younger people a proper liberal arts education and hence a solid grounding in the ideas that have shaped our civilization. We might also end up taking serious scholarship less seriously in the Internet age, which by the way is something that I’ve noticed quite a few grumblings about.
This looks like a problem. What do you think we should do or encourage — individually or collectively — to stem the dumbing-down that Carr identifies? What does this problem imply about how we should educate our kids?
Your thoughts, please!
Carr perhaps never understood that information dispensed today is all about commercialization of content and maximizing acquisition of the almighty dollar. Well, perhaps not as mighty as it once was. Nevertheless…
Type in a keyword and Google decides for you, what is important!
Google is Evil. Period. OK! Just kidding.
Comment by Chris Desouza — August 21, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
I heard that there are some who would eliminate written material and along with them books.
Comment by Thomas Mandel — August 21, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
The solution is conceptually simple, but practically hard to implement.
Once a year, publish a “Best of Citizendium” hardcopy book. Sell it for at least $250 USD a copy, so it has *value*. If people want the free version, they can go to the web site and print the article themselves. Distribute at least half of the revenue to the authors of the articles selected for publication. Articles will be selected based on how much reading the entire article will make people smarter.
If we want to make people sit down and pay attention to complex arguments and thoughts, give them a way to take the content off-line with good old fashioned high-quality acid-free paper that will last 1000 years.
Comment by Troy Benjegerdes — August 21, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
When I used to look up subjects in paper books, I would almost always read short passages from a number of books. Only rarely would I makes notes or copies, or read the whole of a reference book. If a subject was not interesting enough (to me) I wouldn’t bother to go to my bookshelves or a library.
I use the Web databases in exactly the same way, but much more efficiently. My threshold of “interesting” has become lower, but the occasional ‘eureka! is some justification.
I don’t see that getting information in small chunks from the Web instead of from books is likely to deter people from reading complete “great books” (and small books!). The difficulty in reading long documents on line is that computer files are like old-fashioned scrolls rather than bound books (codices): codices replaced scrolls because it is much easier, mentally as well as physically, to skip backwards and forwards in a codex. Most people would surely find this out quite quickly.
For the screen-oriented, most of the great books, from Homer to Tolstoi, are on the Web in full: the only catch is that the Web versions are, or should be, out of copyright and therefore 50-100 years old (e.g. Homer is in Samuel Butler’s 19th-century translation, but the Greek text is on the Web as well!).
About the only way in which the Web may deter people from reading books is the result of a low threshold of interest, leading them to spend too much time “surfing” the Web for a broad range of trivial info. (I say nothing about seeking pictures or movies of types difficult to obtain from the conventional media…..) Even this may be useful, broadening the surfer’s mind. It’s undoubtedly more useful than watching TV (apart from the news channels).
I’m not convinced that info. on the Web is any more or any less reliable than TV or newspapers. In all three cases one shouldn’t rely on one source alone, and it is much easier to check one news agency or newspaper against another on line rather than in paper copies (newspaper owners will agree, tearfully).
And it is my civil right not to read Tolstoi!
Comment by Peter Bradshaw — August 21, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
“And it is my civil right not to read Tolstoi!” says Peter Bradshaw.
Well, far be it from me to suggest you don’t have the right not to read him!
Comment by Larry Sanger — August 21, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
A first thought: I value the Internet in part because I can now download eBooks and read them on my computer, with highlighting, margin notes, ease of extracting excerpts, ease of looking up definitions of unfamiliar or long-ignored words. I can look up bios and other items of interest that turn up in a book. eBooks have opened up a whole new experience in reading books. I do not believe the Internet (or Google, or Live Search) makes me stupid in the sense that it keeps me from reading books. –Anthony.Sebastian
Comment by Anthony Sebastian — August 21, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
In themselves, facts are trivial even when they are correct, and often they are wrong. They gain value only when incorporated into a reasoned “explanation”, and an explanation only gains value when it is clear, readable and persuasive. I think, for Citizendium, we have to give increasing importance to style, clarity and rational coherence, make it an encyclopedia of explanations, not a compendium of facts
Comment by Gareth Leng — August 22, 2008 @ 3:44 am
First, I do have one point of contention: “The classics have no constituency online. Tolstoy isn’t in the blog ranking. Dickens doesn’t appear atop digg.com. Newton and Leibniz aren’t going to be Slashdotted.” The podcast Philosophy Bites has cracked the iTunes Top 20 podcasts, and Hubert Dreyfus’ podcast lectures have been similarly popular, to the point of them being written up in the LA Times.
Secondly, I think that a lot of the problems can be solved by making sure that those in education stop following silly trends. When I was at school (I’m 23, so five years ago), the school was in the process of installing hundreds of new computer terminals, as well as interactive whiteboards. It was new, see, and everything that is new must be done. I still don’t know what the point is. I can’t remember there being any significant bugs or shortcomings in chalk boards, except they don’t make IT vendors tremendous amounts of money. Towards the end of my time at school, I saw many, many hours (both of my own time and of others) being wasted sitting in front of computer screens doing… not very little. When I look back and wonder what I gained most from - reading Shakespeare in English class or completing a “learning unit” in an IT class - well, do I even need to finish this sentence? Reform of secondary education is far more difficult than change on a personal level. I’m really convinced that much of the problem is in how, as a society, we do education of 11-18 year olds.
We need to make a big deal about the value of a liberal education. Certainly, here in Britain, the future of liberal education seems very uncertain. The Government is preaching an agenda of “soft skills”, and seems to think that getting a degree in classics or philosophy is “elitist”, while getting a degree in something supposedly practical is not. (The politicians saying this, of course, are the fruits of the most elite liberal education one could have, and now want to kick the ladder away having climbed it. They are creating an elite of anti-elitists.) As George Walden said a few years ago, nobody objects to their being an ‘elite’ of athletes and everyone wants the best surgeon they can find, but get very edgy when one talks about similar elites existing in the academic realm. I think the role of expertise that Citizendium makes fundamental is important: a person with a Ph.D in physics has a high probability of knowing more about the subject than a fourteen-year old kid called “Tr1>
Comment by Tom Morris — August 22, 2008 @ 6:03 am
(whoops… continued)
…kid called “Tr1xz0r92″. We need to defend the university as being something more than simply an outsourcing company for biomedical research, or a subsidised finishing school, using the sugar of interesting academic content to teach people “soft skills”: the art of being a compliant yes-man. (If they are to become that, then there seems to be no good reason for them to be subsidised by the public.)
Similar instrumentalism seems to exist in museums, libraries and other cultural institutions. The success of a library seems to be measured these days by the number of people they can coerce through the doors with promises of free Internet access and DVDs. Books seem to have become something of a hobby for many libraries these days, rather than their primary business. If cultural institutions devoted to learning have stopped believing in the value of books and reading, that is going to trickle down to the rest of the population.
As you point out on Edge.org, though, ultimately this is our own responsibilities. We have to solve it on our own. If it was as simple as writing a piece of software or legislation or setting up a website, then there’d be no point discussing this topic: we could just do that thing and it would be solved. Change on a personal level will require a lot more work.
I’ve stopped taking my laptop with me to university. I have a small PDA with a very simple text editor which I use to make notes (there’s a ‘CZ’ folder on there with some articles I’m drafting). This is as much to make sure I don’t end up with some kind of spinal dysfunction as it is to prevent me getting distracted by the Internet. It took a few days, but I don’t miss it anymore. The days seem longer, and I find I spend my time reading about Aristotle and Kant rather than the latest component in the TechCrunch-Twitter-blogosphere drama. I still read blogs, but I am slowly cutting them down to being only those written by people I’ve met and for projects I’m involved in.
One thing I’ve always thought would be a good idea would be a “BarCamp for ideas”. BarCamps are these free unconferences where people spend a day or so giving talks about some aspect of technology or the Web. I’ve always wondered whether or not we could do something similar but for the academic humanities - ‘BrainCamp’, ‘IdeasCamp’, ‘ThinkCamp’ - but not just for those engaged in professional research on the topic. You could come along, and there’d be four tracks going simultaneously with people presenting on research they’d done, people collaborating on producing Creative Commons content for projects like Citizendium, people giving personal opinions on books, academics giving lectures on topics they are really interested in. In short: something like a reading group, a graduate research seminar and a lecture series rolled into one huge event with lots of free pizza.
Another thing I’ve started doing is forgoing Google in favour of academic databases. Instead of Googling and getting back some Wikipedia article or blog post, I am now more likely to go to somewhere like JSTOR and get an academic article.
Having a large stack of books out from the library kind of forces you to read them too. If you buy the book, you can keep it on your shelf in the knowledge that you’ll read it eventually. But if you have to take it back in a few weeks, it motivates you to get on and read it.
Comment by Tom Morris — August 22, 2008 @ 6:05 am
I don’t think we need to panic about the supposed decline of reading long and challenging texts. Indexing, digesting, excerpting, and condensing are all as old as writing itself. In Elizabethan times, people created “commonplace” books (from the Latin “loci communes”) in which they wrote down snippets of things they liked. When they went visiting, and found texts in their friends’ commonplace books, they copied them and added to their own. Call them Elizabethan bloggers if you will, but such activities hardly shortened anyone’s attention spans, and thanks to these commonplace books several poems by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others which would have been lost, have been handed down to us today.
Comment by Russell Potter — August 22, 2008 @ 11:41 am
I’m seeing that there’s considerable dismissal of the problem Carr posed. Maybe it’s indeed not such a big problem for Anthony, Gareth, and Russell, who are…shall we say…more set in their ways?
But don’t you see that the fact that so much of life is increasingly available online, always accessible, is possibly putting pressure on the ability of younger people, at least, to focus, and indeed to develop the ability to read at length?
I notice that Tom and Troy see it as a problem and they have suggestions about how to deal with it. I do too. (I did recently finish re-reading Pride and Prejudice, for what it’s worth. Yep, I can still read books! Of course, this is silly; I never stopped reading them.
)
I agree with Russell when he says there’s no need to panic, but according to a National Endowment for the Arts study, book-reading went into decline just as the Internet rose to prominence. And then you’ve got what Carr says and the nerve he has touched in a lot of us. Is this only a collective delusion, then, that we (some of us) seem to be losing the taste for and ability of difficult book-reading? I have to doubt it. And don’t forget the people nodding their heads at what Clay Shirky says, that the world of the future will have dismissed the importance of what he complacently calls the “cathedral-like” model of the mind. That is, the next generation will regard as quaint and old-fashioned the notion that some great individual minds — thinkers and artists — might be especially worth coming to grips with by painstaking effort. Instead, everything of cultural importance will happen in a giant online conversation, vaguely analogous to the Blogosphere, in relatively small chunks. If Shirky’s values come to hold sway, that really would be a radical realignment of intellectual values, and not a happy one.
But the question I really wanted to raise is not whether the effect is real. I think the effect is real, however significant it is and however it affects us personally, and my question is, what can we do about it?
The conversation I want to have is similar to one we might have had in the 1950s or 1960s, after television came into prominence and people started worrying a lot about its effects. Civilization itself is being changed by the Internet; the Internet is changing how we think and how we read. It won’t all be for the better. Television extended our experience tremendously and brought us together in ways we never before imagined. But it also famously pushed us apart and depressed book-reading. The Internet seems to be having similarly disruptive effects. One of the effects is on our attention, which is required for our ability to read, appreciate, and understand long and difficult books. If like me you think it is important that we continue to read, study, and appreciate books (especially the great books of the world’s great civilizations), then you naturally have reason to be concerned. And then the question again is: what can we do about it?
Comment by Larry Sanger — August 22, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
As seems to happen often in this day and age, we are operating under and arguing an over-simplification. The question is not really “Is Google making us stupid?”, it is: “Is society becoming stupider and if so, why?” My answer to a) is “yes” and to b) “for a complicated variety of reasons that interface in ways I don’t fully know and understand but I think the body of geniuses who call themselves The Citizendium can figure out, and which includes a syndrome I call “because I Googled it!”
I believe Larry is right to point out that the ‘Googling’ of society probably does not have such a great effect on such luminaries as Anthony, Gareth and Russell [Aleta waves to Russell] and that that is largely because they were fully-formed individuals *before* these phenomena. It’s not just Google; it’s the Internet: a vast repository for the ravings of every genius and every kook; but it started waaaay before then, before I was bornm even: in Madison Avenue ‘Winston tastes good like a cigarette’ should ; in television ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before’ in music (I’d give examples but they’re foul) oh okay I just thought of a clean one: ‘Fly Robin Fly, up up to the sky’ which, some of you will remember, is the sum total of a particular song: my God, is that the extent of creative genius for a whole generation?
It continued in the fact that I learned and had separate classes in English Composition, Reading Comprehension, and Grammar, and that was before I left primary school, but my younger sisters learned ‘language arts’, and if you have a child today it is being suggested that they will not even be taught writing. I don’t mean essay writing–I mean how to use a pen to write.
These things dumb down a society, but it’s not only Google’s fault. I could go on, but you get the point.
Comment by Aleta Curry — August 22, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
In my case, it’s book addiction + video/music addiction + computer addiction. It’s all about the words, symbols, images. The biggest difference since the internet is now I create words - comments on articles and blogs, my own blog and the creation of the occasional card or other paper craft. In my google reader I try to keep a balance between art/design/craft/music sites and the really, really difficult blogs written by theologians/philosophers/the medical community/the business community/professors/graduate students. I spent my most productive years being that mom who doesn’t care how many kids hang out at her house while you’d plop me in “that nice church lady handing out sandwiches at grannie’s funeral” box. Moms old enough to qualify for early retirement aren’t supposed to get a job needed by the young so society is very indulgent of our internet excesses. And if the world should be thrown into chaos, we’d be surprisingly useful.
Comment by Ruth — August 22, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
I wonder if this concern over a shrinking attention-span isn’t simply the eternal battle of the elders vs. the young. I write this after a day of looking after my six-month-old daughter, who interrupted me from reading newspaper articles of a few thousand words because every few minutes she was bored. We aren’t born with long attention spans; we have to learn to extend them.
Then there is the constant press of time on us. I remember my college years as a period when I rushed through countless books; only after I graduated from college, having no deadlines on my reading, did I try to tackle some of the longer books that I have since read, such as Livy’s History; Tolstoy’s War & Peace; the 3 volumes of Braudel’s Civilization & Capitalism; & the pulp fiction of Yoshikawa’s historical fiction.
It always seems that we are being forced to make a conclusion before we are ready. Had I the time, I could say more — but I have chores to do, so I must leave you with only these fragments.
Geoff
Comment by llywrch@agora.rdrop.com — August 23, 2008 @ 12:24 am
I think this is an ephemeral problem, not a real problem. Throughout history, only a small percentage of the population has been able or willing to “bear down” enough to read classics of literature in their entirety. Those who have bothered (or who have had enough leisure time to do it–remember, many people work VERY hard just to get enough food to eat) have benefited. This will remain the case.
When I teach a college class, I tend to assign some readings which I expect students to do independently, without my help, to supplement the material I am teaching. No matter how much I exhort them to do these readings and impress on them that the final exam will contain questions, a portion of students (perhaps a third) will not read them, and will thus miss those exam questions. And, these are students in a demanding field (computer science) at an ivy league college. It is, simply put, their loss; they get a lower grade.
But the good news is, that the majority do read, at least when pressed to do so, and the really brilliant students read gladly and thoughtfully and come back to me with questions as a result of their reading.
So, I am simply not worried. There have always been dolts.
Furthermore, when much younger, I was unable to read certain novels. It wasn’t lack of interest so much as the desperation of my circumstances, working multiple jobs to get through college in a world where no loans were available for low-income students. So when it came time to read, which was rare enough given my many jobs, I was tired and invariably fell asleep. Thus, I didn’t discover Jane Austen, really, until I was 40, and by then, I had enough life experience to appreciate her completely, so it’s just as well, I think.
If you want a real problem to worry about, worry about the death of liberal education. That IS happening, and I don’t think it’s because people can’t or don’t read long things, I think it’s because our education system is so poor; we aren’t taught history by anyone who actually knows history. We aren’t taught science (at high school level, anyway) by people who actually know science. Instead, we are taught by people who have gotten degrees in “education”. Hello? Since when has knowing about education guaranteed that a person knows science?
Comment by Pat Palmer — August 23, 2008 @ 10:25 am
Interesting point of view. I’ll consider changing my mind about this but for now I still don’t see things the same way you do.
Comment by Brian Owens — August 23, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
I am tempted to agree with the older/younger argument given by Geoff, but am minded of the fact that I spend a lot of time skim reading and I am, by the youngers’ judgement, getting to a stage where I am older. However, I would not say that this impacts my ability to read a long text in-depth, nor that I am failing to apply my mind to the texts that I read.
I think a key point here is that the vast quantities of information available via the web, coupled with its non-linear nature, can help support certain type of mind in performing intelligent, thoughtful enquiry. This is particularly the case where inter-disciplinary investigation is concerned. Even when I was a young teenager, before I had ever touched a computer, I was firmly of the opinion that having a mind that liked to skip between subjects was a useful thing for a generalist. But one should not think of the generalist lightly - to be successful as one, you have to specialise in generalism. Being able to context switch is highly important, and a useful skill in the online environment in which we increasingly find ourselves. But it is not just a coping mechanism - it is a practical way of building links between subject areas, generating ideas, and building a firm, broad, knowledge base.
Any environment can produce specialisms which operate in different ways, of course. Whilst there are some (and I hope I am one of them) who can make good use of the breadth of knowledge available, there are also those who can, or do, not. Many of these are, I suspect more lazy than doltish - they have enough provided for them that they can afford to approach the web as a leisure space, and put little effort into it at that. Others, though, may not be able to train their attention span to suit the environment, and they may need extra help in adapting.
As for dumbing down - that has been going on for a very long time, well before the internet came on the scene.
Comment by Pat Parslow — August 25, 2008 @ 6:20 am
About complex thought and Great Books.
I think the kind of Great Books that were produced in the past simply can’t be produced today. The problem is that in the past, very little was known. So a single very smart person could take his or her ideas and develop them and keep developing them and develop them to the point of a great treatise. These great treatises could then serve as a starting point, a foundation, for future thinkers to debate, question and build upon. For instance, Euclid wrote a great treatise on geometry (I’ve heard that he didn’t come up with many of the theorems himself, and they were the work of others, but it was still the first single compilation of much of the knowledge).
Today, too much is known. There is a lot of knowledge and information. A lot of the things that scientists and philosophers thought to be true earlier are now known to be false (for instance, Aristotle’s belief that matter was infinitely divisible). Knowledge is also fragmented into many more disciplines, which means that, to an extent, a generalistic Great Book of the kind produced in the past isn’t possible.
The change in the structure of knowledge has resulted in a change in the way scholars work and operate. There are a large number of books written today, both academic and popular, that are far from simplistic. There are large numbers of highly specialized academic texts, and a large number of more popular-style texts that simplify some of the issues to present them to a larger audience, and yet convey fairly complex messages. Many of these are based on the latest scientific knowledge and understanding.
Is there value in reading the Great Books of the past? Certainly, there is value. But that value doesn’t undermine the value in reading a lot of the good books of the present.
Coming to the Internet.
Does the Internet reduce attention span? I think this is a hard question, and I certainly don’t think it can be answered by mere reflection. Individuals are very unlikely to come up with an appropriate conclusion because the age and circumstances of an individual change. I’ve certainly grown in my ability to concentrate in the last ten years, but that may partly be explained by the fact that I’ve grown from the age of 12 to the age of 22.
There’s also the question of selective memory. We aren’t good at remembering and reliving the past as we experienced it at that time; certain kinds of memories stand out and others don’t. Specifically, the more distinctive and vivid memories stand out more. The memory of reading a good and challenging book and understanding it deeply would be one such memory.
So, I don’t know. I haven’t noticed any reduction in the ability of people around me to read books, or their ability to carry out complex arguments. I have noticed a reduction in certain arguments that arose due to lack of minor information — the kind that you can now quickly Google and find out. I don’t think that’s germane to anything, though.
Finally, how the Internet empowers us and what we can do about it.
The Internet allows for a hyperlinked structuring of knowledge, which is, in my view, a good thing. This doesn’t mean that everything should be hyperlinked. Not all forms of complex thought may be suitable to a linked structure — but many are. And we should examine everything to see whether it benefits from the advantages of small slices and hyperlinking that the Internet offers. We should remember that the great writers of this past didn’t choose against the Internet. They just didn’t have the option. So it might well be the case that some of those thoughts are better expressed using the linked structure of the Internet.
Linked structure doesn’t necessarily mean Twitter-length statements. Conciseness is an art, and it is also very hard. It’s easy to be brief, but it’s much harder to be brief and yet to convey complexity. In fact, it’s easier to be long and convey complexity than to convey a message of the same complexity in a short message. So, I think we should admire the art of writing short and powerful core messages but we shouldn’t equate mere brevity with greatness.
I think one of the deeper problems here is that nobody’s really trying to figure out how the Internet can be used to slice and repsent knowledge better. Current usage of the Internet is largely superficial, and most of the money that goes into the Internet is to make it better for advertisers and corporations, rather than to make knowledge more beautiful. If people start looking at the Internet seriously, I’m sure we can come up with a large number of solutions to encourage curiosity, creativity, and thoughtfulness.
Comment by Vipul Naik — August 25, 2008 @ 11:15 am
My brief comment was intended to convey my view that whereas “skating” sources, whether web based or other, can retrieve “facts” in high volume, such facts are pretty valueless in themselves, mere assembages of trivia. Explanations, on the other hand demand reading and understanding in depth, and by promoting explanations as the valued product of an online encyclopedia, we are supporting and promoting reading and understanding in depth
Comment by Gareth Leng — August 26, 2008 @ 11:27 am
I think we shouldn’t afraid to be stupid if we are able to work more efficiently and choose more clever decisions. How so? We just moving from greeding approach to knowledge - study before acting to lazy approach to knowledge - act studying what you need. As the result we may know less but achieve more. Of course, there is limits for lazy approach. Scientists can’t afford it. Because the problem that can be solved even with all existing knowledge is considered trivial.
With lazy approach we start to filter texts for usefull content. Longer texts is harder to filter. Also, to be effective we have to determine usefullness of the text as quickly as possible. Short texts survive just because we read them all before we understand that they are useless. Personally, I can read sci-fi books for 10 hours straight, but have troubles with reading a page of uninteresting but important text.
Comment by Andrey Khalyavin — August 29, 2008 @ 10:45 am
I think what needs to happen is search engines need to have choices for algorithms. And recommendations on which one to choose. For instance recommended for 20-somethings interested in celebrities, socializing online, and various things can choose one algorithm. And those interested in intellectual pursuits can choose another. Perhaps, even a personality profile test of 10-simple questions. And right along the side of the search box would be a series of letters A, B, C, D, E. And you could choose which one you wanted. Even depending on your mood or what you were doing. If you just wanted to vegetate, pick A or B. If you are doing more serious personal research pick E. Something like that. So, there is a thought for you. - Lance
Comment by Lance Winslow — December 20, 2009 @ 12:28 am