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Kevin Kelly on how the Internet has changed him
Kevin Kelly has a different take on bit literacy from what's in my book, and as always he's thought-provoking. It's well worth reading the whole piece; here's an excerpt:
If alphabetic literacy can change how we think, imagine how Internet literacy and 10 hours per day in front of one kind of screen or another is changing our brains.... In response to this incessant barrage of bits, the culture of the Internet has been busy unbundling larger works into minor snippets for sale. Music albums are chopped up and sold as songs ... Newspapers become twitter posts. I happily swim in this rising ocean of fragments.
While I rush into the Net to hunt for these tidbits, or to surf on its lucid dream, I've noticed a different approach to my thinking. My thinking is more active, less contemplative. Rather than begin a question or hunch by ruminating aimlessly in my mind, nourished only by my ignorance, I start doing things. I immediately, instantly go.
Really well-written piece. Still, I wonder whether Internet-inspired, fragmented "active thinking" is where we want to go as a society. Everything is an inch deep; no one has time to go any further before they get distracted by the next thing. Is there still a place for people who choose to turn off, let the bits go, and ruminate a bit, perhaps even aimlessly? Or are they hopelessly behind the times?
I'm reading a 900-page Civil War history right now and am learning things that can't be reduced to a Twitter post or Youtube snippet. What's more, spending many hours in this one book prevents me from monitoring the infinite bitstreams online while I'm doing so. Am I dangerously out of the loop while I read the book?
I just wonder if there's a middle road: one in which people can decide when to turn on and engage the bits - in the very ways Kevin describes! - and when to turn off and be old-fashioned human beings just using their brains and non-augmented senses. This middle way - the ability to do either, at will, and to be good at both - is the essence of bit literacy. We need both.
I've been thinking about something similar the past few weeks. I've been following Kevin Kelley's writings for a little over a year now and most every post is quite thought provoking.
At GOOD.is they had their "Slow" issue the other week: http://www.good.is/departments/the-slow-issue/page:1/sort:popular/range:all
There are several good articles on exactly what you've pointed out in your reading of the Civil War history.
I don't think the middle path exists yet. It can exist, but we haven't pursued it yet. We go to a site and tap our fingers waiting for the page to load, but as soon as it does, we don't treat the content as we would if it were in a book or newspaper. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe it goes back to McLuhan, the medium is the message.
Speed and time will be the new currency.
Great post. This topic has been on my mind a lot lately, the notion that we don't think very deeply anymore because we are so used to the stream of snippets that seem to do our thinking for us. It's been great for helping us all to realize just how small the world is and how similar our thinking can be, and yet I feel it can kill creativity if people aren't careful.
That's why I love my Kindle's inability to browse the internet properly. I get lost in books and long articles again.
I'm not too worried about the next generation, having seen them in action. My school age children are much more knowledgeable on things than I was at their age. There's the capacity for quicker learning that didn't exist before. For example, yesterday I spent several hours teaching myself the fundamentals of GSM telephony, with no prior knowledge, just sufficient motivation. What I did would have been completely impossible to do by myself even two years ago. Weeks of time spent researching was condensed down to several hours. You can get information faster than your capacity to absorb -- that's the limit.
Children who take advantages of these opportunities can gain knowledge so much faster than before. They do need to get some basic skills about evaluating the quality of the information. I think this must just come with the territory, a requirement for the new age of information.
Let's not forgot that laziness has always existed. I remember pretty clearly as a child that some kids would write reports by copying passages directly from sources without altering them, without even really understanding what was written. As far as I can remember, there weren't that many people who were reading 900 page history books 15 years ago either.
As someone who used to study human information processing and now spends 9 hours on the computer, only to go home, cook dinner, and then spend several more hours on the computer, I frequently wonder how this lifestyle changes our attention and our thought processes. For myself, I've found that during hobbies like gardening and hiking, I start to think freely and creatively again. The trick for me - and many others I believe - is forcing myself to walk away from the technology I'm immersed in.
Another element of our lives that has been changed by the Internet is how we communicate with each other. For example, my kids will chat online with their friends for hours rather than talking on the phone or just getting together like we did when I was a kid. Their writing quality is generally poor when they do this -- incomplete sentences, poor grammar, lots of abbreviations, etc. I suspect this will have long-term effects on how they think and communicate as adults. I believe that strong writing skills lead to deeper, more structured thinking and better problem solving. I worry that today's technology may be compromising our kids' abilities in this area.