Although “One of the shibboleths of the Church of the Holy Screen is that iPhones, Twitter, and Kindle make our age unique, uncharted territory,” observes Daniel J. Flynn in Unplugged, summarizing William Powers’ thesis in Hamlet’s Blackberry, “Man has been there, done that.”
Powers is skeptical about a world that toggles among multitudinous computer windows and screen operations. The digital revolution has transformed attention deficit disorder from a handicap to an asset, converting what earlier generations might have regarded as a lack of focus into “multitasking.” As Powers observes: “Geniuses are rare, but by using screens as we do now, constantly jumping around, we’re ensuring that all of us have fewer ingenious moments and bring less associative creativity to whatever kind of work we do.”
I commend the whole review, Powers’ ideas seeming to me perfectly sensible.
In my experience, judging from e-mail conversations I have, when you learned to write affects how you use the technology. The people who learned to write and discuss things before the invention of e-mail find it a great tool, because it creates a new mixture of conversation and letter-writing, with something of the speed of the first and the distance and reflection of the second. You can respond fairly quickly, but with time to measure what you say, check your facts, dig up good quotes, etc.
But people who didn’t learn to write and discuss things then — and I mean “didn’t learn to write and discuss things” as well as “didn’t learn to write and discuss things then” — tend to use it and similar technologies in the way it seems to encourage: to send short, pointed, undeveloped, often emotive and sometimes pointless, thoughts. The exchanges make a personal connection, which is probably all to the good, and communicate judgments and emotions, but not thoughts of any complexity. What baffles me is that this is true of young people who are some of the smartest people I know.
I sent the link to my friend Stuart Koehl (author of Friday’s “On the Square” article, An Independent Witness to Marriage), and he responded:
I don’t substantially disagree with Powers, particularly in regard to people who have grown up in the digital age. I notice, for instance, a fundamental disregard for basic knowledge, both of things and of how to do things. “I can always look that up on the web”, I am told, to which my response is, “What if your server is down, your computer is busted, or your iPhone’s battery is flat?”
Just as the advent of literacy undermined the mnemonic skills needed for oral culture, digitization will undermine the skills needed to work “unplugged”. I know soldiers whose skill with map and compass has seriously (or even totally) atrophied due to the ubiquity of GPS — something that will some day get someone killed, I’m sure (if it hasn’t already).
While I fully appreciate the internet, the Web, digital music, You Tube and all the rest, I had the advantage of learning how to write using a typewriter, of doing research with a pile of dead tree editions, and of the need to carry a lot of knowledge in my head, organized for rapid recall.
As for the Crackberry, I loathe the things, and refuse to get one (or any sort of smart phone). Those who say they are addictive are correct — I know people who cannot go for five minutes without checking their e-mail, and I have become used to attending meetings where all I see are the tops of other people’s heads, as they all engage in the Blackberry Prayer: reading or texting messages under the table.
Everybody should be forced to go for a couple of months disconnected from the net, just so they can remember how things were done–and can still be done–with paper and pencil and memorized facts. This will stand us in good stead, when, inevitably, somebody figures out how to crash the whole web, or large portions of it.
It’s interesting that this subject keeps coming up, again and again. Another friend pointed me at a study that said kids who are raised with computers tend to have shorter attention spans. That’s where I began thinking that every breakthrough in communications technology involves the loss of some existing skill set, almost as compensation for whatever benefits accrue from the new technology.
Writing tended to undermine our ability to memorize long stories, lists, poems, etc. Printing undermined calligraphy (and typing destroyed handwriting); television undermined the listening skills and imagination required for radio (or reading aloud). It’s a constant process of trading off one thing for another, and each generation has to judge whether the game is worth the candle.
I’m not sure each generation actually judges whether the game is worth the candle, or just plays the game because it’s the game evreryone is playing.
July 19th, 2010 | 1:45 pm
When we switched from the scroll to the book, there were undoubtedly those who thought that the natural continuity of written language was being interrupted by page breaks. When we switched from papyrus to velum there must have been those who resisted the shift away from the agricultural roots of civilization, and again those who lamented it when we shifted from velum to paper. The historical constant, it seems, is the presence of a certain kind of personality who resists change.
But what does he think about text messaging?
July 19th, 2010 | 2:27 pm
Adam Baker: “The historical constant, it seems, is the presence of a certain kind of personality who resists change.” Interesting. My thought from reading Koehl’s response was this: The historical constant, it seems, is the presence of a certain kind of personality that craves change.
July 19th, 2010 | 2:43 pm
“What baffles me is that this is true of young people who are some of the smartest people I know.”
In my experience it’s just the opposite. My guess would be that your “young people” just aren’t young enough. Look at facebook and you’ll find that the people writing those unnecessary, trite, “oversharing” status updates are the over 25 set. The kids are alright. It’s the adults who have been let loose in the playground who are completely lost. If you’re over 20, you can barely classify as “young” in the digital world.
—-
I’m also curious about why Koehls thinks books are somehow better in terms of information access. Sure, my internet could go down and my phone could die. That’s possible. But in a 24 hour day, the far greater possibility is the library is closed. He talks of the web shutting down, well I’d like to talk about finally getting digital access to books have been locked away in preservational vaults for centuries. The age we live in provides the greatest wealth of human knowledge available to the greatest number of people in human history. This is an accomplishment of the highest order. And one that we should be rightly proud of. The internet, like the printing press, like the written word itself, is a revelation.
July 19th, 2010 | 4:19 pm
Andrew: You may be right. I was thinking primarily of a thirty-year-old man I know, who may be the smartest person I know, but who writes the most abrupt e-mails.
But I don’t see much evidence of younger people having sustained discussions either, of the type natural to those of us who are older, and who thus find e-mail a great tool, if not a great toy. But my experience here is very limited. Do the twenty-year-olds develop their thoughts in their Facebook postings? Do they use any of the electronic modes of communication in that way?
July 19th, 2010 | 4:26 pm
Why are books better? First of all, I did not say they were better, but I gather that the art of close reading is another casualty of the internet. What books are is reliable. CODEX 1.0 has not needed much in the way of updates in 2000 years (and, sorry, Adam Baker, I do believe that the codex was an immense improvement over the scroll, due to its greater storage capacity and non-sequential access capabilities). It is fairly cheap, durable, requires nothing in the way of electronic support, is easily accessible to the user, and, in conjunction with the application INDEX allows one to find what one wants within the volume quite rapidly. When the power goes down, when the the internet is unavailable (and, once you get outside of the cocoon of a major American city, it is frequently unavailable), CODEX is still there. And, properly maintained, a CODEX volume will still be accessible hundreds of years from now. Good luck with your CD-ROM, flash drive, or hard disk, though.
As for materials, contra Adam Baker, I’m agnostic. For some very valuable books, vellum might be proper; for serious books, low acid paper would be my choice; and for pulp fiction, well, recycled pulp will do. So much for Adam’s reductio ad absurdum.
Adam Baker ought to admit that change brings with it tradeoffs. It is not merely that something is better than something else; usually, something good has to be lost because we adopt something better. Usually, the loss is not noticed immediately, but in the fullness of time, it is. Take, for instance, the loss of orality that came with the advent of literacy. Human beings no longer had to be the sole repositories of institutional and societal memory, but on the other hand, a certain degree of spontaneity in literature was lost along with the oral tradition. Where is the modern Homer, composing epic poems in his head using a mnemonic data base of hundreds of oral poems? Who can imagine (other than a few ethnologists in the Balkans) what it is like to sit around a camp fire listening to a bard composing, on the spot, a new saga or epic commemorating recent events?
Adam may not think so, but I consider that a loss–just as I consider the ability to write thoughtfully and at length, or the ability to produce an illustrated manuscript that lovingly transmits the contents of a book from one generation to the next. Yes, moveable type made books accessible to the masses (at least, once the masses learned how to read), but mass produced books were, on the whole, utilitarian objects, to be used and discarded.
In comparison with e-books, however, the printed volume is a true work of art, and there is an aesthetic experience associated with a book that is missing with electronic volumes. The latter may be cheaper, and may make arcane information more readily available–but it is a tradeoff, once again.
Andrew points out that the internet and other electronic media “provides the greatest wealth of human knowledge available to the greatest number of people in human history”. I don’t disagree, but I would point out that availability does not equate to mastery, and if the internet has shown me anything it is the ease with which people become “instant experts”–and in the process proving how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. All that access to information has created a caste of people whose knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep, who have difficulty assessing sources and thinking critically, simply because information is so easily accessed that they are drowning in it. There is a real dearth of deep knowledge on any subject, and against the background noise of the web, those who have it often go unheard. And that is also a loss.
July 19th, 2010 | 5:24 pm
>Sure, my internet could go down and my phone could die. That’s possible. But in a 24 hour day, the far greater possibility is the library is closed.
Which should encourage folk to purchase books as well as borrow them. As fond as I am of my local library it could be swallowed whole by the earth and I wouldn’t lack for reading material for years, at a minimum.
July 19th, 2010 | 6:23 pm
@David Mills, I think your reply is a good example of the disconnect that I’m talking about. The young are much better at recognizing that the new mediums of communication (facebook, texting, twitter, IM, and to a certain extent, email) are not designed for “sustained discussions.” Thus we are less susceptible to things like “status update syndrome” wherein a (usually older) person discovers twitter or facebook and proceeds to post every banal detail of their existence.
If you want to see where we *do* get into sustained discussions, just look at the conversation we’re having here. Blogging is also a phenomenon of new media. I’ve always thought it was telling that, of the two conservatives at the New York Times, Ross Douthat has a blog and David Brooks doesn’t.
—–
@Stuart Thank you for your long response. There’s a lot of content there, so forgive me for breaking down my thoughts.
“First of all, I did not say they were better, but I gather that the art of close reading is another casualty of the internet.” Which is exactly the kind of comment from your OP that seemed to imply to me that you thought the book culture was better.
I’m also not sure that you’ve made your point as to giving up on books is such a bad thing when the books themselves are rapidly becoming available online. Google Books is arguably the best library in the world. Full access to it will likely be free to university students within the next couple years. Most of the advantages of books that you listed are as good or better with digitization. (Not only does a google book still have an index, but I can also google search the book for the phrase I’m looking for. No longer are we limited to proper nouns.)
“Reliability” is a question of tradeoffs. Digitization let’s us access books and records that would otherwise be stored in dark rooms for ever. If you want to see a field of research that changed over night just look at genealogy. Before the internet, all records had to be sought in their original locations (parishes, counties, towns, etc.) A nearly impossible task for an American family that comes from all over the world. However you have a point that digital forms are ephemeral. But again, the trade off is one of access. Is a CD-ROM any worse than a book that would dissolve if picked up? Information that is usable is superior.
From an aesthetic perspective we are both on the same page. I love books. I love the smell of books, the feel of books. And no e-book will ever replace that. But I don’t think books are in any real way threatened by the internet or e-books for precisely that reason. I would point to the difference between newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are famously failing, and in a spectacular way. Magazines, however, are quietly prospering, because unlike the broadsheet, they offer a unique service. TV killed radio dramas, but it did not kill radio. I believe the same is true for books.
The last point I would make is that I find your complaint about “instant experts” to be oddly refreshing. The tendency in academia has been, for some time, to specialize in so minute a field a as to render the particular study to be useless. This is especially true of the humanities. Our academic culture is a mile deep and an inch wide. If the internet is bringing on an age of generalism I think it ought to be welcomed. What is a renaissance man if not a generalist?
And allow me to predict any response about the masses not meeting that level of general excellence. Well fine, but when have the masses *ever* reached that level of general excellence? At least they’re trying.
July 19th, 2010 | 7:19 pm
As a librarian, I’ve given some thought to the complicated issues of digital vs. print media. While I’m quite happy with the extraordinary level of access and research tools that digital media enable, one of things that bothers me most about the idea of a transition to digital media as the primary mode of storage is the problem of required supporting technologies. I’m talking about what’s needed for access, not for production.
For example, take a database of magazine articles. In print form, this would be a literal stack of bound copies. They require shelf space, good enough climate control to prevent deterioration, staff to control access by users, a well-maintained catalog, and maybe a few other expenses. Real expenses, granted, but fairly fixed, and the sort of thing that even a poor or low-tech library would reasonably be able to provide themselves.
In digital form, this would be an online-accessible database. It requires: IT-trained staff to maintain the digital collection; computers and IT infrastructure to allow access; climate control to maintain the server hardware; software to monitor access and assess costs; often staff to train users on how to use the database; and a great deal of electricity to run all of it. Libraries almost never own and operate their own databases, because the specialized capabilities needed to maintain access are beyond their means. This creates a huge market for database providers — a market that, so far, has in operation been rather damaging to libraries’ ability to provide access to these products. There are severe market-power problems associated with requiring such specialized and expensive infrastructure, which has allowed certain companies to just straight-up price gouge libraries.
So yes, every new technology comes with its own problems, even ones as cool and useful as digital information collections.
July 19th, 2010 | 7:24 pm
Another problem that worries me is what’s popularly called “the digital divide.” That is, some societies and populations have access to all this amazing new tech, but most don’t. This is more complicated than just the problem of how to get everybody a computer and broadband. How does this interfere with our ability to communicate and interact across that divide? Do the massive differences in our informational toolsets keep us from hearing or considering one another? Does life become so different on each side of the divide that it causes new conflicts and barriers to emerge between them?
These are pretty nascent thoughts for me, so forgive me for not developing them further.
July 19th, 2010 | 9:24 pm
Andrew: I don’t think the young (under 25, by your definition) “are much better at recognizing that the new mediums of communication . . . are not designed for “sustained discussions,” because even an old person can see that. I certainly wasn’t using those media as evidence.
Except for one. Your inclusion of e-mail in that list surprises me, since it is a very good medium for that kind of discussion, for the reasons I gave. And unlike responding to blogs, you’re writing to a selected group of people, with some degree of shared interests and a desire for truth (not always true in blog discussions), who can develop an identity and shared vocabulary over time, which is an important part of sustained discussions. If you’re right that young people don’t use e-mail this way, why don’t they? And why isn’t this evidence for my suggestion?
. I was curious from what you originally wrote if they did use any media in that way, and you say blogging. You know far more about this than I do, but how often do young people write on blogs in a sustained way You do, obviously, but are you that representative?
July 19th, 2010 | 10:48 pm
@JB in CA:
That’s an alternate perspective, I agree.
@Stuart Koehl:
Thank you for your long, thoughtful response. Electronic technology makes everything faster and cheaper. It doesn’t make any of the previous ways of life impossible. Following your example, neither velum, acid-free paper, nor pulp preclude other printing options. Even this St. John’s illuminated manuscript project shows us that the old ways are not entirely lost — if we don’t want them to be. We could also return to performed epic poetry if we wished. Why don’t we? I don’t know.
I agree that ebooks are ugly, but that’s hardly a limitation inherent to the procedure. Typeset books were much uglier than handwritten books for a long time. Computer typesetting was uglier than manually set type for a long time. But the technology eventually meets the aesthetic needs, and eventually allows for more perfect aesthetic realization.
Really, what is the problem with information being easier and cheaper to access? Is society really better served if basic factual information is restricted to those who live near research libraries? What would be gained if we were to roll the technology clock back to 1950, for instance? Does having to slog over to the library engender some sort of academic fortitude in researchers, which guards against speaking based on superficial understanding? Are we the first generation that has had to put up with hacks?
Would the world have been a better place if we had never been able to have this conversation? :-)
@Ethan C.
I appreciate your concern over the expense of those databases — truly, they are gouging you in those access fees. But, could you more cheaply provide access to the information in those databases in print?
The digital divide is a real problem. But, I live in a developing country, and internet access is doing a lot more to disseminate crucial information than the second-hand books that are shipped here.
July 19th, 2010 | 10:56 pm
@David Mills
(let me preface this by saying that I don’t want to claim to be over-representative of my generation; for all I know I’m an outlier, but I certainly don’t think I’m too extreme. Let me also apologize in advance if this seems self indulgent– but since you asked…)
I included email largely because among my peers, direct emailing is actually pretty uncommon. Email is, like postal mail, more formal, and significantly less personal than the alternatives.
Part of that I think is the extent to which we are required to balance different email accounts. I have three. My school email which is assigned to me and that I forward to my personal email. My anonymous email which I use to sign up for websites that ask me for it but that I don’t want to be bothered by (movietickets.com sort of places) and then my personal email which is where I try to concentrate email that I actually intend to read.
The result is that email is less of an address than an account. It’s a buffer between me, and the human beings I talk to. 99% of the email I get is commercial or automatically forwarded by some other website like facebook.
Of my close friends, I have their phone numbers, I have their facebook accounts, and their instant messenger screen names. I could not, off the top of my head, name their email addresses, and between those other options there are very rarely situations where I would need to. Email, then, is most often consigned to formal business (job applications, school work, etc.) or family.
—-
As to how many of us blog or are involved in online communities? I’d just point to a website like digg (http://digg.com/)
The quality of the comments is hit or miss, but if you look at the profiles that list age, you’ll see that this is clearly a community of thousands of young people engaged in discussions from the sublime to the ridiculous and everywhere in between.
Otherwise just look at the blogosphere in general. Even if the numbers of people involved are low, the people who *are* running them tend to be young and engaged, and have a readership that is likewise.
I mean, really I would ask you to find me a blog where young people *aren’t* writing in a sustained way. Either posting themselves, or writing in the comments.
Are a lot of those blogs vulgar? Yes. Are a lot of those blogs low-brow? Yes.
But you have to start somewhere. And generationally speaking, I don’t think our start is that bad.
July 20th, 2010 | 7:07 am
It is humorous and humbling to see the misspelling found in this article. One must also loath the benefits of modern spell checkers.
July 20th, 2010 | 9:18 am
Adam wrote:
“Electronic technology makes everything faster and cheaper. It doesn’t make any of the previous ways of life impossible. Following your example, neither velum, acid-free paper, nor pulp preclude other printing options. Even this St. John’s illuminated manuscript project shows us that the old ways are not entirely lost — if we don’t want them to be. We could also return to performed epic poetry if we wished. Why don’t we? I don’t know.”
This is not so different from what I said. The various skills you mention disappeared, or at least were relegated to the realm of specialized crafts or hobbies, whereas once they were in fairly common use. In some cases, they disappeared entirely, and had to be resurrected through the careful reconstruction and rediscovery of techniques by devoted aficionados. In some cases, we simply have not been able to recover the skills and techniques of ancient artisans (e.g., mosaics, encaustic painting, certain methods of manuscript illumination, etc.), and despite modern technology, we are not able to replicate their accomplishments.
The sad fact is, nobody noticed that these skills were vanishing, or if they did, it was not considered important. Only over time do we realize that, while modern technology coveys great benefits, it also has costs, and one of those is the loss of certain skills that once were common and now we prize because they have become rare.
I remember in one of the later Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson inquires as to why Holmes insists on telegrams, when the new-fangled telephone is much more convenient. Holmes replies that, because one is paying by the word, the telegraph forces one to think about what one wants to say, and to choose one’s words judiciously. Much the same might be said about the relationship between word processing and longhand/typing of manuscripts.
Those of us old enough to have written our dissertations, or even books, on paper, learned that the mechanics of writing can be slow, tedious, even painful. Re-writes were a real piece of labor. As a result, we learned how to organize our thoughts before committing words to paper; we got discipline. I love word processing, as it eliminates most of the labor from writing and editing. However, my inherent laziness plus the habits ingrained in the era of the typewriter still cause me to think carefully before committing my thoughts to the screen. My ideal is “First Draft = Final Draft”, and my editors appreciate that my copy is usually pretty clean when they get it. On the other hand, as an editor, it pains me how badly many fairly intelligent people write, and I attribute that directly to word processing and e-mail. Put plainly, it is just too easy to churn out copy without any real thought or concern about style, let alone content.
To make an analogy with figure skating, once upon a time, the sport included a discipline called “school figures”–actually etching shapes in the ice with the blades–circles, spirals, figure eights, and so on. Like watching paint drying, actually. And, once figure skating was televised, pressure mounted rapidly to eliminate them from competitions, which happened about twenty years or so ago. The sport now focuses solely on the athletic aspects, especially jumping, and much of the artistic element has disappeared–due almost entirely to the suppression of the school figures, which provided the foundation for everything that came afterwards. By putting children on computers even before they have mastered penmanship, we not only ensure that all our children will have the handwriting of doctors, but that they will never really learn composition and style. In fact, those skills are generally ignored by teachers, who stress the most important thing is getting one’s idea’s out. The result is a muddle, stream of consciousness writing which was boring when it was a literary affectation, and which today is merely painful and an impediment to effective communications.
Now that kids are being taught to use Powerpoint in the third grade, I anticipate a future in which nobody actually reads at all, but merely looks at pictures and bullet charts.
David,
On e-mail groups, they are directly analogous to the old correspondence circles of the 18th and 19th centuries. People had groups of friends and colleagues with whom they regularly exchanged letters, and which, in many cases, evolved into a medium for discussing in a profound manner a wide range of topics, from the social and political to the artistic and scientific. These were made possible by the advent of reliable mail service, and being both self-selecting and self-disciplining, became an effective way of like minded people engaging in extended, multi-party discussions, even though separated by great distances. E-mail groups are similar, with the advantage of low costs and high speeds. But, as with all things, quality is dependent on what the participants contribute. Garbage in, garbage out.
July 20th, 2010 | 9:25 am
In dealing with old vs. new forms of communication, it is good to remember Sturgeon’s Revelation: “Ninety percent of everything is [excrement]“. That is, in the good old days, most writing, art, music and so forth was mediocre at best, and most of it has not survived to the present day. Time is a great filter, and only the very best works of each generation tend to be passed down through the ages.
This has the tendency of making the past look good in comparison with the present, since we are surrounded by clouds of mediocrity. Undoubtedly, there is much good being composed for the new media, and some that will stand the test of time and one day be ranked with the classics–but it will be decades, if not centuries, before we are able to discern what is good from what is not.
July 20th, 2010 | 9:53 am
@Stuart
I suppose then that I’m simply less convinced than you that these new technologies will somehow supplant cogent, coherent, long-form communications.
The backlash against powerpoint in a number of circles is well documented.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?_r=1&hp
Taken one way, that could vindicate your point about the medium overall, but I’m not sure that it does. I think it just says that the skills you are describing will always be valued.
I would also reiterate that I think, with powerpoint especially, the young “get it” more than their elders.
The odds of seeing a powerpoint presentation that consists of subjectless bullet “sentences” and nothing else increases exponentially with every birthday after 30. Those third graders are being taught to use powerpoint for what it was intended; seemless integration of multi-media into a verbal presentation.
I also think that your Holmes analogy actually fits well with my point about space limited technologies. Twitter and (especially) text messaging have forced us, if nothing else, to be better writers of epigrams. The idea that we’re carelessly firing off meaningless text messages filled with jargon is a stereotype that doesn’t fit with reality.
No one over 12 actually talks to their bff Jill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o
July 20th, 2010 | 2:35 pm
Stuart,
Yes, but. An example of technological change that brings loss is the myriad of horse-and-carriage related terms that have been lost since the invention of the automobile. Technology changes, and certain things become obsolete. That is sad in a certain sense.
At the same time, I think that the shift is due rather to our attitudes and values than to the technology that is available to us, and I don’t believe that the technology is driving the change. It’s not that we have lost an appreciation for the finer things, but that less-fine things have become available to so many more people.
Word processors have indeed changed the way we write, and I have wondered about whether that is for the better or for the worse. I am inclined to believe that my mind and not my medium is the limiting factor in my own case.
We are all entitled to our preferences, of course.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact