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.

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.

the future of libraries: less books, more baristas

I am my first semester into a Library & Information Science program, and so the big question on mind, and the murmur among the halls, is, what future do libraries have in a word of electronic media and digital books? the shortest answer is that there will always be a strong need for professionals who know how to collect, organize, and present information for others.  in fact, with increasingly complex (even if intended to be user-friendly) technologies and software, many people feel overwhelmed by it all.  granted, it’s easy enough even for your grandmother to use a search engine, but is that enough?  there is far too much information out there, and it takes a bit of know-how to learn to sift through and organize it all, not just for yourself, but for others.  and that’s where the need for librarians — or information professionals — comes in.  and that’s why a vital part of libraries in the future will be user instruction.

a further concern relates to how expensive digital subscriptions to various resources can be, from journals to reference materials (see a brief discussion in this New York Times article).  although your average library-goer may have little interest in these resources, anyone who wants to access responsible scholarship and important studies may have no way to get their digital hands on these materials — at least not for free.

anyway, there are a number of discussions of these issues to be found across the interwebs.  last September, CNN ran an article on the “The future of libraries — with or without books.”  in it, the author, John Sutter, stressed an important point: no matter what format books or information comes in in the future, the purpose of a library will remain the same: “To be a free place where people can access and share information.”

hence Library 2.0, which means more than libraries that use social networking and information-sharing tools; it also involves a reimagining of libraries as places not just for accessing but for sharing information, as community-gathering centers.  some have incorporated multimedia centers, featuring video-shooting and -editing technology; others feature e-readers and plasma screen TVs for accessing information.  in fact, larger public libraries are now offering e-books that can be downloaded with your library card.

a particularly exciting example is the “Urban Mediaspace” set to open in Denmark in 2014.

not only is it going to be one of the — if not the — largest libraries in Scandinavia, creating a new community center and landmark on the waterfront in Aarhus, but it will be state of the art in a number of ways.  the architecture/design website Mood writes,

Knowledge is today more valuable than ever, and a local community that highly prioritizes a state of the art library symbolizes democracy and a clear vision for the future.Years ago knowledge was often associated with books, classrooms and hard focused work. In our vision for the new Mediaspace, we offer a broader interpretation of knowledge. In our point of view it is still hard work to acquire, understand and contextualize knowledge, but it also overlaps with play, experiences and physical activity. The Mediaspace is therefore not only shelves and media in a rational universe; it is also a flexible space for contemplation, inspiration, communication and innovation.

it is also designed for sustainability and synergy with the city, stressing inclusiveness and openness — the latter principle literally being part of the design plan.  this seems to be a feature of a number of new library designs.  as Miller-McCune put it,

Architecturally, these new libraries seek to respond to the evolution of information technology and the blending of ways people seek knowledge, entertainment and social encounters. Many have glass walls, which both express their openness to the city and reveal the lively goings-on inside.

these libraries feature “living rooms,” chat and discussion areas, coffee shops, etc., such as in the Seattle Central Library.

I think all this is fantastic, and very exciting.  of course, it will take money to convert current libraries to these new, forward-looking, digitally inclined media spaces — and many libraries and library systems are already in danger of losing funding.  but that danger comes from a misperception that the work of — and thus need for — libraries has passed, and that is something we need to fight for.  education, the sharing of ideas, and connectedness — local and global — must be a priority if we’re going to have any chance at a reasonable future.



book review: Delete

a very thoughtful book about the role that remembering and forgetting have (supposedly) played throughout human history, and why we are for the first time at a point where remembering, not forgetting, has become the default.  the author finds this problematic for two main reasons.

the first has to do with power.  despite what is said, information is not power — it’s the ability to control and restrict access to information that is power.  Mayer-Schonberger worries about the extent to which we may, whether we know it or not, lose control over pertinent information about ourselves, including more troublesome features like our personal information, as well as our tastes and opinions that outside agents use to great extensive — and unending — dossiers about us.  we are not in a great position to control who has that information and what they do with it.

the second has to do with time.  Mayer-Schonberger sees forgetting — as frustrating as it may be — as a blessing in disguise in that it lets us freely reconstruct our memories — which are far from perfect — as we progress through our lives, choosing to focus on (and thus retain) certain memories and not others.  what happens when we have perfect (not now, but someday soon) recall, through digital technology, of all of our past decisions and events?  will we, like the few individuals who do have perfect memories, be frozen in indecision, constantly replaying the past and inept at acting in the present?

the author then takes a look at a number of possible solutions, from digital rights management to information abstinence and other suggestions, but decides that these are not “silver bullets” for confronting the problem that we face today.  however, he does not reject these, and in fact he hopes to see many of them in place.  his concerns are pragmatic and focused on where we are now, and he does not denigrate other suggestions (many from his peers) in self-promotion.

his ultimate solution is to use meta-data to place expiration dates on information that we store or share with ourselves, in addition to supporting programs in our technology (e.g., storage devices) and online tools (e.g., browsers) that automatically erase information about our searches after a time period — a period we may have some control over.  we could thus choose what types of queries we want google or amazon to remember indefinitely, and which ones to forget after some time.

overall, Mayer-Schonberer’s suggestions are very interesting ones, especially since they are rooted in the technology as we have it today, although there would need to be some pressure on companies to implement some of these changes to help people make the transition (he takes humans as they are, with imperfect knowledge and motivations, and that’s another strength of the book).  it’s  not entirely certain how all of these suggestions would play out — and how inconvenient it would all be.

in the case of putting a shelf-date on personal photos shared online — which is one of the cases he uses to illustrate the extent to which information online can come back to haunt us — it seems difficult to know how you would decide what expiration date to put on something like that.  plus, if you consciously put a date on a photo that could get you into some trouble — maybe you should think twice about sharing that photo.  indeed, in the case he uses — someone being denied a teaching certificate because of a questionable photo on myspace — a photo like that could be found at any point before the expiration date and the individual could still face unforeseen consequences — after all, that’s the point of the story: it was a seemingly harmless photo that the individual never thought could be used against her.

but again, the strength of the author’s position — and of the book overall — is that he is not out to establish THE plan for confronting these concerns; rather, he works within the existing frameworks to offer a novel solution that could help fill in some of the gaps and — in keeping with the concerns of the book — return to individuals some of that control over information and help shift the balance back to a society in which forgetting — and not remembering — is once again the default (even if just barely).

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.

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.