Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” Sound familiar? Describing, in The Atlantic Monthly, his own struggles to keep his attention span from contracting like the wild ass’s skin in Balzac’s novel, Nicholas Carr cites a British study of research habits among visitors to two serious scholarly websites which suggests a more general problem: that “users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of ”˜reading’ are emerging as users ”˜power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”
Almost seems? I don’t know about Mr. Carr, but I have no doubt that I go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense. The question is, how guilty do I need to feel about this? In his view, presumably, quite a lot guilty, since by reading online as much as I do I am depriving myself of the ability to read offline. He takes this insight to an even more alarming conclusion in the end, writing that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” And if that’s the case for veteran readers, think how much worse it must be for the jeunesse dorée of the information age, if they never developed the habits that accompany “deep reading” in the first place.
It is these poor cultural orphans, for whom “information retrieval” online is the only kind of reading they know, who are the main concern of Mark Bauerlein in his new book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. One would think that a whole future in jeopardy would be too serious a matter for the flippancy of the rest of the subtitle: Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30. But Professor Bauerlein, who teaches English at Emory University and is a former director of research and analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, is not always sure just how much a matter of mirth “the dumbest generation” is, or isn’t. After all, it is not really their fault if, as he says, they have been “betrayed” by the mentors who should have taught them better. Yet he seems to agree with Nicholas Carr that what we are witnessing is not just an educational breakdown but a deformation of the very idea of intelligence.
Is the wireless making us stupid? Oh wait, I meant, is the Television making us stupid? Oh, wait, I meant…
No sir, I wish to heaven Google had the ability to make you a little cleverer, or more industrious. But it is as incapable of that as it is of making you the reverse.
did the printing press make us stupid? I used to be able to sleep right through friar john’s 3 hour sermons, now I just can’t seem to focus on his points.
Kendall, did you mean to transpose “stupid” and “Google” in the headline, for effect?
Add GPS devices and the future inability of anyone to read a map. We are lost and stupid.
I agree with the writer that we surf the internet to find “power wins”. I also agree with no. 44 about GPS devices – really annoying toys!.
[blockquote]Add GPS devices and the future inability of anyone to read a map.[/blockquote]
Read a map??!! Try “see what’s in front of your nose” or “remember what you did yesterday.” True stories:
I was following someone with a GPS to find a restaurant in a strange town. My guide turned into an obviously empty parking lot surrounded by dark buildings, got out, and wondered where the restaurant was — the GPS said it was right here!
I was following someone with a GPS. My guide turned up a dead-end road, that he knew was a dead-end road because he had been down it several times in the previous couple of days, because the GPS told him to.
I love my GPS. It is one of the most incredible tools of the last 20 years. I travel alot and this thing is really keeping me from driving around lost.
Two stories for your amusement…
[b]The Legend of Thamus [/b]
Thamus was an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh who questioned the usefulness of new technology. Now at the city of Naucratis in Egypt, the god Theuth had been busy inventing useful things like calculus, letters, and the art of painting. He also invented writing. Wanting to share his wonderful new invention, Theuth came to Pharaoh Thamus and offered him the gift of writing. Theuth declared: “There is an accomplishment, my lord, the kind which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of all the Egyptians. Allow me to offer you this sure marvel of memory and wisdom.â€
After hearing the explanation of how the new invention of writing worked, and more boastful predictions by Theuth, Pharaoh Thamus replied: “Most excellent Theuth, truly you are the father of invention. Yet, I cannot help but think that those who acquire this new skill of writing will cease to exercise their memory and become more forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs rather than by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a tool for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, users of writing will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And, because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to society. It is therefore my judgment that you shall keep your gift. Writing is henceforth forbidden in all the realm!â€
(loosely from Phaedrus, 95-96)
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[b]Ned Ludd’s Revenge[/b]
On the night of November 4th, 1811, a few miles north of Nottinghamin in the little village of Bulwell, a small band of men had gathered in the cold and darkness. With a firm purpose in mind, they formed ranks, hoisted their hammers, axes, pistols, and other implements of destruction, and marched off to the house of `master weaver’ Hollingsworth. After posting a guard, they forced their way inside the house, bursting through shutters and doors, and then proceeded to destroy all the weaving machines there that they felt were dangerous to their trade. Then, after finishing their task, they fled into the night, scattering throught the countryside. Later, with cat like tread, they reassembled at a pre-determined location. After taking a head count, Ned Ludd, their leader fired his pistol into the air and they dispersed, each heading for his own home.
This first attack on textile machines, by those calling themselves followers of General Ludd, was only the beginning of 14 more months of turmoil in the countryside of the English Midlands. The small band of men would go down in history, and into the English language, as the first opponents of the Industrial Revolution and the model of modern nattering nabobs of negativism toward technology. They were of course…the Luddites.
“Fire is a good tool but a poor master.”
This applies to anything; as I said above, don’t abdicate your common sense because your GPS tells you something you know ain’t so.
My favorite bit there is from Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, in which Donald Duck takes up the philosophy of “flipism,” letting his life be guided by the toss of a coin. He uses flipism on an auto tour, with the result that he turns down a one-way street the wrong way and ends up in court. After hearing his defense, the judge says, “I see. Because of your defense, I’m not going to fine you the usual $5 for wrong-way driving [see, this is an OLD story] or the usual $10 for causing an accident.”
Next panel: “But I [b]am[/b] going to fine you [b]fifty[/b] dollars for letting a dime do your thinking for you!”