These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.
Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.
But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different group.
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.
OK, now I’m even more certain that someone on T19 must be following my Twitter feed 🙂
AMEN
Because all the baby things in the world are available through my son-in-law’s large extended family, he and my younger daughter, who are expecting their first child in September, have asked of friends and family books for their newborn. They want her to grow up with the great children’s classics, as well as the delightful stories they remember from their childhoods, and, of course, the Gospel. Baby showers with books rather than booties might be a novel idea, but that is what has been happening. Having read Brooks’s piece I applaud them both all the more.
Amen, indeed!
The distinction that increasingly makes sense for me is between information and thought/understanding. As a parish priest making newcomer calls to folk who have read up on us on Wikipedia and as adjunct faculty at the community college attempting to teach primary texts (philosophy), I know the difference well. I can busily assimilate information without engaging the thought of those about whom I garner information or challenging my own thinking process. The literary (and philosophical) canon priveleges the texts that force us to engage in questioning — whether Shakespeare or Dante, Descartes or Kant. However, Brooks is wise in resisting the temptation to reduce to the issue to good books vs. bad internet. Baldly, if I cannot recognize the comparable thought process in something new, then I do not understand the classic (that sentence needs to be qualified in many ways, most importantly that it does not apply to the canon of Scripture).
Anyways, to Richard Kew, bring on Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, The Sword in the Stone, Treasure Island, Narnia, . . . There were giants in the land in those days, and we will not ever see their like again.