The Internet Makes Us All of the Above
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
There’s an interesting (and I think distracting) conversation going on at the moment about the positives and negatives of the Internet on human individual and societal potential. It’s distracting because people seem to think this is a two sided debate (SMARTER people v DUMBER people) – rather than an interesting conversation about the personal and societal effects of digital information flows.
Rather than offering a synopsis that would take me a full day I provide a chronology:
- On 24 May, Nicholas Carr wrote an article for Wired – The Web Shatters Focus: Rewires Brains
- On 4 June, Clay Shirky wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal – Does the Internet Make you Smarter?
- On 5 June, Nicholas Carr wrote another article for the Wall Street Journal – Does the Internet Make you Dumber?
- On 6 June, The New York Times published – Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
- On 10 June, Steven Pinker wrote in The New York Times – Mind Over Mass Media
The conversation over that time appears to have been framed as a soccer match between people who see digital media as the Fantastic Four versus those who dwell on the Neolithic past and drag their knuckles on the ground. An example is whether paper books were better or worse – try the word “different”.
Try this: it is a conversation about the balance between positive and negative effects of digital technologies on humans at an individual, group, organisational and societal level.
Each level is unique and adds to the complexity. If you are looking for a green light to say digital is lighting up your brain and making you a megastar then so be it… similarly, you may be after justification that all digital is bad news for humanity. But remember this – the conversation is not about either pole but it is about the continuum that lays between.
