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January 13, 2010
Wednesday PM
Things I'm reading:
1. Nicholas Carr on what the internet does to the human mind.
I find this particularly interesting, because I can feel the internet's effects on my own mind, attention span, modes of thought. Maybe you can too. Since leaving law school in 2006, I spend 8 hours minimum - and in reality, more like 9-10 - per day in front of a networked device, be it the laptop or the phone. The weekends aren't much better. ("Better"? Or worse? Should I be ascribing a positive or negative quality to my internet usage?) The internet beckons, always: checking my e-mail is literally the first thing I do when my eyes open in the morning. And although I've been trying to be more respectful of my circadian rhythms since reading some weird Gwyneth Paltrow essay Finny sent me last year - which means turning off the computer, the tv, and the phone an hour or two before I'm into bed - it's often a losing battle. When I get to work, I have at least 8-14 windows open at all times, and when I take the elevator downstairs to get lunch, I'm checking my email as I travel down 18 floors.
Being constantly plugged has changed the way my mind responds to stimulus and processes information, I'm sure. I can feel it in ways both large and small. When I used the word "circadian" above, I first Googled it to make sure of its spelling. And while I've been typing this entry, I've also had six other tabs open. I've written work emails, kept up on my twitter feed, received emails about Haiti and China, and researched radio personality Delilah. That's small stuff, of course - but over time, the rivulets established by such activity become more established, right? Slowly but surely cutting deeper pathways into my circuitry? I think so. I remember how after I first signed up for Twitter - more than 2,500 posts (sorry; don't like "tweets") ago - I found myself walking the streets in a mini-haze for a couple weeks afterwards, silently composing my thoughts in 140 word droplets. That hasn't totally left - and how much of it becomes internalized?
At any rate, does worrying about this kind of stuff make me a cultural or technological conservative? I hope not, and I don't think it does. For one thing, I'm not sure this change is (a) negative or (b) any different, in a fundamental way, than any other change in the way that human beings have communicated information of whatever type to each other. I know that folks freaked out at the advent of the printing press, the novel, the radio, the television. (I could Google some more examples, if I was so motivated, and provide primary sources here. Ha!) And I remember that one of the blessings of having an older Dad growing up was realizing, via long conversations with him, that certain facts of human life were absolutely constant, absolutely vivid and particular, no matter the age, the means, the surroundings. Talking Heads: "Same as it ever was!"
My dad, for one, loved the democratic potential of the internet right from the start, and earlier than most - the transmission of information quickly, personally, across space and time without apparent barrier, save the limits of the croaking dial-up modem - well, he loved it and realized its galvanizing, equalizing potential right away. He died in 2005; I wish he was here to talk to about this. I think he might say that what's lost is ours to remember, if we wish, and that in the meantime, awfully hard to begrudge anyone the power to talk and listen to the world, in the way the internet allows, out of some sense of "preserving" one's attention span, or keeping things otherwise as they "ought" to be. That's not what I think Carr is doing here - not as a primary goal, at least - but those currents are evident at some level.
Ok.
2. Larry Quinn on the state of the Sabres.
3. Michael Kinsley on "The Decline of the Racist Insult."
4. Ta-Nehisi Coates: "What Gangsta Rap Has To Say To The Gentlemen."
5. Oh snap! Delilah's playing my jam.
Posted by caps at January 13, 2010 10:13 PM