Daniel Lyons: Obama right, devices like the iPad are rotting our brains
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
I mean what will become of our natural memory if all we have to do is write stuff down and read it later on. When I was kid you memorized what was important. And we were _strong_!!!
Then there's the effect on personal communication. What ever became of traveling days and weeks to go talk to someone else far away. We miss all that travel and and seeing what the world is like. (Not to mention the effect on the travel industry.) A written letter just doesn't have the same effect on someone as a face to face visit. And besides, if its in writing, how am I gonna wiggle out of terms and conditions I don't like?
I tell you, I don't like it.
And don't get me started on that damn printin' press...
edit:
Seriously (huuuur hur hur hur) people aren't getting stupider.
There've _always_ been stupid people in great numbers. Never been a shortage. Its just that its easier to see them or have to deal with them. Anyone can post a blog or get hits on youtube. That's a good thing. The problem isn't too much information technology, its too little filter and editorial technology. It'll happen. We're, what, 15, 20 years into this internet thingie. 40 years if you're generous. It took over a hundred years for the printing press to stabilize technologically and several hundred years for people to learn to deal with its societal implications (actually we're still working on that one...) Sites like this (hacker news) are just the beginning.
In the meantime, I've started doing a little grassroots filtering by no longer reading Newsweek technology articles...
Now, we do all these things through a couple devices. I don't buy the idea that we're really doing that much different. It's just really hard to tell tasks apart; all we see is "guy staring at screen".
But that guy staring at that screen? He could be checking a Twitter stream, or he could be reading a letter from his mother. He could be watching porn, or he could be studying for an exam. He could be playing Peggle, or he could be looking at photos of his new niece.
The only thing I know for sure, is that it's wildly presumptuous to think I actually know what he's doing, just because it involves a screen.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10446874-71.html http://www.healthfinder.gov/News/newsstory.aspx?docid=636475
Right. Would Fr. Coughlin have got where he did without the Internet deluge? Or William Jennings Bryan or William Duane? What half-ass posturing. Demagoguery does not and never has depended on the existence of a technology, though various technologies have given and advantage to one or another style of demagoguery.
Newsweek should know better than to publish this--or perhaps print has rotted their wits.
So maybe Obama's comments simply lack imagination of how these devices could be more useful in the future. And I believe it's also true that some of the most significant technological innovations start out as toys.
This is the problem; who is starting/making this paradigm shift? And can they cause such a shift to remove the bias towards entertainment and information overload.
Sure, there are lots of examples (Iran for example) of the utility of modern media. But currently the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad - and getting worse.
That, I think, is the point.
As a percentage and in absolute numbers there are more educated people, by nearly anyone's definition of education, than at any time in history up to now. And television, mass communication in general, plays a large part in that.
As hard as it is for many to imagine, a lot of what passes for junk culture and time wasting trivia these days will be considered high art in the future. Future pundits will decry how the youth of the country are wasting their time with the latest feelie dramas and grab-o-vision media instead of partaking of more uplifting fare like downloading _Maru, the box cat_ and staying up all night playing _Tomb Raider_...
I know there are a handful of TV series that constitute legitimate art, and an even rarer handful of those which are even popular. But by and large, TV isn't an improvement to the average person's level of culture or education. It's not necessarily a setback, but it's not an improvement, either.
As someone who grew up in the 50s and 60s I can tell you from first hand experience that TV was used massively for education, and that it had a profound effect. Was it used for other things? Things more visible? Sure. Is all TV educational? That's a harder question to answer; note my point about what is considered culture at any given time. Sturgeons Law applies to TV like everything else, so we can't only judge a form by its worse 90%...
As for broading the discussion, which I refute, it's impossible to discuss the effects of one mass communication medium without discussing it within its context. At least not very meaningfully. If you scan around the posts on this page you'll find a post from me making references to the history of reading, writing and printing.
You've taken my point ("television failed to fulfill its promise as a source of education and culture for the masses"), ignored it, and instead responded to a straw man ("the aggregate of changes in mass media since the Elizabethan era have not improved the level of education and culture in the general population"). And then when I call you out on it, you tell me "the discussion is clearly about more than television". My point was about television, you can respond to whatever straw men you like but don't pretend it's a response to my point.
OP was about new media, communications tech, iPads, etc. The parent post was about more of the same. Your response implied that TV didn't have a positive effect on education; which you didn't state explicitly, but your comment could only make sense to someone who understood the larger context of the discussion. So my bringing in media other than TV would seem to be OK.
It's impossible to discuss the effects of media in isolation from history, precedence and context. Okay, that isn't true; but I would argue it's impossible to _usefully_ discuss the effects of media, especially a mass communication medium, like television, without looking at it in a broader context.
If anything, it seems to me that you've taken a useful discussion and tried to limit its scope to a single point of supposed failure and tried to extend that failure to the entire topic. And rather than to responding to any of my points directly, you are arguing about form and context. I hope you'll excuse me if I tried to drag the discussion back toward relevance...
Television has had a massive effect on education in many parts of the world. Some first world, some third world. I could list hundreds (thousands) of shows that have been considered a success and have affected mass audiences. Do you really need me to make such a list? Start with Sesame Street, the Bell Labs science series, oh, I don't know, nearly every PBS station's daytime instructional schedule for the last 40 years. In many third world countries broadcast television is the major source of daily schooling. I'm talking teacher and black board somewhere else and children in a remote area gathered around the village TV set hooked up to a satellite dish. (These days I suspect this scene is played out out with internet satellite based technology.) Someone is watching all that TV. And notice that I'm not even considering whether or not the explosion of Discovery/Learning/A&E/DIY/Indie type channels are of educational value (I vote yes.)
If you want to do some additional reading on the subject, I can recommend Arthur Clarke's excellent collection of essays on the subject of modern communications technology _How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village_.
No if you want to argue that the bulk of TV is junk, I wouldn't disagree with you, hence my reference to Sturgeons Law. If you wanted to argue that the infrastructure for TV, and most mass communication in general (opps!!! there I go again!!!) is funded and driven by things other than purely educational goals, many of them not so noble... Whelp, yep, you're right. But so what? That doesn't make the education benefits not there, and that doesn't mean that the technology is worthless (I would argue, as I did, that what you think is education and what other people might find of value in broadening and enlightening their world might be different.)
As someone who grew up when TV was (relatively) rare, and has lived to see such an explosion in instant, nearly frictionless mass communication, I find it incredible that someone could think that TV has had little positive effect on education. Color me puzzled...
I'm actually more optimistic about the internet, because like books, the internet at least encourages literacy. At least so I thought, until bandwidth increased to the point where the internet became another TV. Now I'm dubious. I see the early internet and TV as going in completely opposite directions, though, hence my reluctance to conflate all advances in media as having the same effects.
100 years ago, people had less truly leisure time. Books were not as common and news didn't travel fast. I got to see photos of the plane going down in the Hudson minutes after it happened thanks to twitter and an iPhone. We are still adjusting to the new world and it will be some time before the filters get internalized. It isn't the gadgets its biology.
Now the quote. I find it disappointing for two different reasons. The first is simply that I felt we had elected a technology clued in President. It seems that was either a lie or he is being disingenuous in his speech. I really have a tough time believing he doesn't know how to work and iPod.
The second problem is that I hate how he claimed ignorance to make himself look better than the people he was admonishing. There were so many ways to give that speech that would have not put down geeks. "I don't play with those things so I am cool" cliche of his speech writer is a little heavy.
I know I personally have used it to answer quite a few emails (but then again, if I was buying it for just personal use, I likely wouldn't have; I'm a professional iPad dev), as well as keep up on rss feeds and used it as a pdf reader.
Information can be a thing too. Sometimes information liberates us, and in other circumstances it weighs on us.
Obama is right.
"We are constrained to be 'engaged,' as the existentialists say, with Technique."