From Thinkers to Clickers | Hacker News Reader

From Thinkers to Clickers

acm.org

22 pointstjr14 comments

I don't think the author did a very good job of making the case that people are thinking less due to the web. "Sometimes you need to get a second book on a subject and that gives you time to think" is not a satisfactory substitute for actually measuring how much thinking people using books versus the web to acquire knowledge do.

I also think the focus on clicking is a little bit misplaced. A similar argument would be that listening to a lecture is better than reading a book because a reader spends all her time turning pages.

I feel like this is a really interesting topic that isn't addressed very well by this article.

The web provides more "thinking food" although it is distraction sometimes.

"The simple printed book is much more conducive to promoting thinking than the sophisticated Web. If a book does not provide all the information that one needs, some of the information has to be deduced and some of it has to be imagined."

Not everyone will agree with this, but that point really resonated with me.

Worth the read. I found myself feeling a bit convicted. I may stop by the library later tonight and pick up a book.

I'd rather spend my deduction and imagination time on problem solving than information gathering.

Or to be more specific: I'd rather spend my deduction and imagination time engaged with my peers on solving problems, than sitting in quiet contemplation of information that I do not have convenient access to.

As for myself, I'd say I prefer the opposite. There's something to be said for personal & solitary contemplation.

Perhaps it's just your standard introvert vs. extrovert style of thinking? Everybody's different. :)

Why is your "deduction and imagination" time a fixed quantity? The thrust of the argument in favor of learning through books rather than the internet is that you will spend an equal amount of external problem solving time, but more internal problem solving time as part of the information gathering process.

Because all my time is a fixed quantity? I'd like to live forever; I just don't think it's going to work out. ;)

And I don't see any reason to prefer internal problem solving to external problem solving. If anything, I would lean toward external problem solving, as I believe very strongly that interacting with my peers has made me far better at it.

(to imitate sibling poster @roc)

I'd rather reduce the overhead of gathering information, so I can think about the actual problem rather than think about where I'm going to acquire the information.

Clicking: The Repetitive Task of the Cyber Age

There is a good point in this paragraph: in an attention/information economy, the act of selection has both a primary and secondary economic value. The primary economic value is satisfying the consumer's desire for information, the secondary is satisfying the information-providers desire for information about the consumer. Although the secondary economic value of a single click is almost infinitesimal, the number of collectors is relatively small.

I think the internet has created a problem due the the sheer amount of information we can reach. I disagree with the author though and think we are just experiencing "teething" problems while humans get used to the internet. Any new technology requires time to adjust.

I'm excited at what will happen when computer technology seizes to be 'new' and becomes a stable medium. If you disagree with this ever happening consider the lack of major change in desktop OS's in the last 5 years.

I wish to disagree on some of the views put forth by the author. I've certainly learnt a lot just using the internet ( ex. learning a new programming language.) I even bought a couple of books which were helpful to me, but not as useful as the web. There needs to be focus no matter whether you read a read or you browse. Clicking != stupidity as long as you know what you want.

You make a good point. If you wisely use your time on any medium (Internet, Books, Newspapers, TV, Radio, Lectures, whatever), you can learn a lot of meaningful information. Kudos to you for doing it! :)

If you don't use your time efficiently, however, you can end up in an endless purgatory zone of just, say, "clicking around the internet".

I think it comes down to the individual, if you're able to "focus" effectively on the task at hand or not. I read a blog posting a while back that argued that focus is a competitive advantage in today's world as so few seem to do it well (must check my email every 5 minutes, gah!!! ;). Switching focus rapidly throws your mind out of the zone and arguably makes you less productive (there have been some pop-science study's of late that have backed this up).

I think the Internet has and will continue to have profound effect on how we interact with the information, and most likely, on our cognitive processes as well. It is unclear, however, whether the overall change is progress-positive, progress-negative, or progress-neutral. Also it is unclear what can be done to prevent the change: the genie is out of the bottle at this point.

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