grumble grumble iPad waah

over at Newsweek, Daniel Lyons has a bit of a rant about how iPads and iPods — and the whole darned internet and the technology we use to access it — are rotting our brains and making us dumblier.

I really have no interest in addressing specific points.  I only want to say how tired I am of these self-indulgent or self-maligning critiques of new technologies or new forms of entertainment.  it is rare to find a writer who actually has some sort of perspective on the issue.  it’s always self-centered “I waste too much time on the Internet and imagine everyone else does too” or “if I, an intelligent person, waste so much time with technology, imagine how much the stupid masses waste on it–and it’s making them stupider!” nonsense.

what do these writers imagine people used to do with their free time?  go to the library?  nope.  and even if they did, can we really say that the kinds of books that most people (the masses, or hoi polloi if you are British or know Greek) read in history — romance novels, copy-cat adventure stories, exploitative colonial narratives, etc. — was really all that enlightening?  give yourself, and the rest of the world while you’re at it, a break.

guess what I do online?  waste time?  sure.   write stupid blog posts?  sometimes.  but I also find articles and spend a ton of time on WordChamp learning new languages.  I also find e-books and other electronic resources for learning modern and ancient languages.  and I also watch documentaries.  and Colbert.  and really dumb stuff, too, sometimes.

the problem with all of these rants — some of which are entire books — is that they are almost always completely uninformed about historical literacy rates or any perspective whatsoever about what people have traditionally done with their free time.  I can’t stress enough how self-centered and narcissistic it really is.  it amounts to saying, what I have decided is important to me in life is what everyone should be doing and also what most likely everyone has always done, and look at all the people around me failing to live up to my standards (including myself!).

as I’ve written about previously, I’m not defending this generation over any other, but I am saying that I would appreciate a bit of information or perspective when someone tries to make some sort of argument.  but you almost never get one.

if you hate how much of a distraction the iPad or your computer is, then hows about working on not spending so much time on them?  OK?  if you think “we” ought to go the the theatre more often or read more books, then dig out your library card or credit card and plop your highbrow, disgruntled ass down in a seat and soak up some tasty knowledge.

or waste time on this.

digital devil

here is another quote from Alberto Manguel, this time from him not through him.  in addition to being very good in general, his A History of Reading is proving to be quite pertinent in these uncertain days (so far as reading and books are concerned):

It is interesting to note how often a technological development — such as Gutenberg’s — promotes rather than eliminates that which it is supposed to supersede, making us aware of old-fashioned virtues we might otherwise have either overlooked or dismissed as of negligible importance. In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected — as far as statistics show — the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form. Those who see computer development as the devil incarnate … allow nostalgia to hold sway over experience.

I do think, however, that e-books and e-readers (combined with the internet) pose a “threat” to the print form in a way that CD-ROMs never have, but still, it is quite clear that any doomsayer regarding the fate of books, as if they were once and for all the end-all and peak form of our knowledge consumption, or the only way to truly appreciate language and stories, has no clue about the history of “books.”

unplugging the digital natives

there’s a good, but short, article over at The Economist that questions the popular idea that the younger generation — Millennials or what have you — think and view the world differently as a result of their high use of the internet and social-networking sites.  from overly optimistic excitement about the revolutionary, grassroots-movement potential of this and following generations, to the frantic calls for educational and marketing reform aimed at reaching these youngsters, there are a number of assumptions that often go unquestioned.

so as to not make a relatively short article any longer, here are a few of the important points:

• Siva Vaidhyanathan writes, “This is essentially a wrong-headed argument that assumes that our kids have some special path to the witchcraft of ‘digital awareness’ and that they understand something that we, teachers, don’t—and we have to catch up with them”
• Michael Wesch, of this video fame, says that many of his incoming students only have a superficial knowledge of the tools they use regularly
• There is also great variety — that is, a range — of internet knowledge and use within this new generation as well
• There is an unavoidable degree of superficiality when it comes to online activism (e.g., joining a Facebook group or cause, signing an online petition)
• While 18-24-year-olds are far more likely to share news stories and spread information online, they are the least likely to e-mail representatives or make online donations.  As the author of this article writes, “Rather than genuinely being more politically engaged, they may simply wish to broadcast their activism to their peers.”

I suppose that jumping from high hopes regarding the revolutionary potential of these new tools to the assumption that people will automatically use them for that purpose is the same as trying to connect, with a straight line, basic literacy and an unbridled passion for reading and learning.  just because most people can read and most people live within driving distance of a library doesn’t mean that we all turn into Enlightenment thinkers.  so there’s no reason to be overly optimistic about a new generation’s potential for networking, problem solving, and revolution.

on a similar note, however, those who lament the fact that people today use the internet for mundane and mindless things — rather than information seeking (the right kind of information, that is) and learning — should keep this fact in mind as well, recalling the extent to which people of any age have a fondness for the trivial.  we shouldn’t be overly optimistic (not to say we can’t be excited) or unduly disappointed (though we can surely be frustrated) when we are faced with the reality of what we are and what we do.

hedgehogs, foxes, & the internet

recently over at The Times, Ben Macintyre reflected on the “big question” on Edge and mused that when it comes to information gathering, we are today all foxes rather than hedgehogs.  by this, he refers to the famous Isaiah Berlin classification of thinkers into hedgehogs, which “see the world through the prism of a single overriding idea, whereas foxes dart hither and thither, gathering inspiration from the widest variety of experiences and sources.”  Macintyre writes,

Today, feasting on the anarchic, ubiquitous, limitless and uncontrolled information cornucopia that is the web, we are all foxes. We browse and scavenge thoughts and influences, picking up what we want, discarding the rest, collecting, linking, hunting and gathering our information, social life and entertainment.

he then weighs in on the pros and cons of this development:

At its worst, it means shorter attention spans, shallower memories, fragmented, unsustained argument, the undermining of intellectual property rights and a tendency to mistake anecdote for fact. At its best, the internet represents an intellectual revolution, fostering free collaboration as never before, with dramatically improved access to boundless information, the great store of the world’s knowledge just a few keystrokes and clicks away. In the great bubbling cauldron of cyberspace, remarkable new recipes are being cooked up every minute.

echoing something that David Dalrymple wrote in his Edge piece, about which I posted a short while ago, Macintyre writes,

The internet is changing the very nature of human memory. Erudition and experience, the store of knowledge built up by an individual over years, is becoming less important than the ability to focus and edit: extracting information from the machine has superseded the ability to recall it unaided.

carrying the fox metaphor further, Macintyre makes an important caveat, I think, regarding the overwhelming amount of junk that exists and needs to be passed over or sorted through:

Reading the web usefully requires a new form of literacy, the ability to sift from the abundance of information what is helpful from what is pointless or merely distracting. Many feel overloaded by the onslaught of information: too many websites, too many messages, a deafening chorus of tweets and texts. Internet thinking is not just about browsing and gathering, but choosing and rejecting. The internet fox knows many things, but while hungrily snarfing up titbits from every corner, he must also know what is indigestible, what is nourishing and what is poisonous.

this is a theme I keep coming to the more I read about the future of technology and of learning: we need a stronger emphasis in our education on how to think critically and how to access information — which includes an understanding of the pertinent research tools and methods in various fields, not just the use of new technology — rather than on the more traditional take on what we learn and memorize.

filter & focus

over at the Edge’s big question, David Dalrymple muses, “Filtering, not remembering, is the most important skill for those who use the Internet.” as I continue to think about how and what we should learn in an increasingly information-overloaded world, I tend to think that what we should be learning is how to think critically, how to access information, and how to sift out the rubbish. that’s not to say that we shouldn’t still cover the basics of a traditional education (language & literature, science, math, history, etc.), but it would significantly alter our approach to how we teach and what we expect students to know or to be able to do. I think memorization — while still relevant and unavoidable in our daily lives, and especially in various careers — is a virtue of bygone days. what we need to know to live our lives and to function effectively we will invariably learn (or suffer the consequences), but it seems that people are likely to drown when flooded with so much information and they have no idea how to stay afloat.

perhaps more important than trying to learn a basic science (which will soon be forgotten) would be, in addition to a basic overview (for which students would be responsible) would be learning the bigger picture and the methods by which scientific conclusions and consensuses are reached. more important than a few courses on Western history (and maybe only one devoted to the rest of the world), during which students memorize dates and skeleton outlines would be learning the principles of historiography and how to go about evaluating claims and doing historical research (again, along with a broad picture of world history and those essential “plotting points” essential for building more in-depth knowledge).

I don’t envision a future in which no one will learn anything anymore, relying on our stored information (that we can access whenever we want) — and even if we do more than now, so what? I possess very little basic survival information, but I think it would be pointless to still teach our children all the necessities, starting with Stone Age tool making and hunting, all the way to the present. we’re fortunate that information is so readily available — but what we need are the tools to learn how to use it effectively (and the continued incentive to go beyond the surface and analyze what we actively research or passively receive).

anyway, the author also weighs in on the extent to which our ability to focus may be a better indicator of job performance than what we have heretofore learned.

Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends’ doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.

what’s the big idea?

over at Edge, this year’s big question, which will be weighed in on by a number of important thinkers — from evolutionary biologists to psychologists, from law professors to tech innovators — is, “How has the internet changed the way you think?”  for anyone unfamiliar with this website and its attempts to create forums (well, not technical forums) for cutting-edge ideas across various disciplines, I suggest you check it out.

I plan on concerning myself more this year (esp. as I start a Library and Information Science program) with questions about technology and the future of learning, literacy, techno-cultures, etc.  I also hope to enjoy some classic sci-fi and dystopian literature, just for kicks.

my immediate thoughts are that all of the innovations, esp. regarding networks and the organization — and availability — of information, are more good than bad, and the problems we face have to do not with complete upheavals of life, intelligence, values, or whatever, but with accustoming ourselves to doing things in new ways and coming up with creative solutions to new challenges, not with wallowing in our frustrations, imagining that once upon a time things were so much better (coincidentally looking a lot like what we think things should look like now), and ballyhooing our impending cultural demise.

anyway, to not get too far ahead of myself (haven’t read much yet), I’ll stop with a quote from Clay Shirky:

The beneficiaries of the system where making things public was a privileged activity, whether academics or politicians, reporters or doctors, will complain about the way the new abundance of public thought upends the old order, but those complaints are like keening at a wake; the change they fear is already in the past. The real action is elsewhere.