As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
I think the solution to this is just a little discipline. As I have pointed out in some talks I've given, I have always read a lot of books, but never more than when I became a book review editor. The effect of that on me was that I largely lost the capacity to enjoy purely passive entertainment. I simply can't watch most TV programs. Movies have to grab me quickly or else I'll get bored and wish I were home reading. (I would have walked out of Reprise yesterday afternoon if I had realized Debbie found it as tedious as I did.) TV news shows - and, alas, newspapers - fail to hold my interest also because - thanks to the web, actually - I know how selective and tendentious their reports have become. Sometimes, when I'm reading, I make a mental note to look up something on the web, and sometimes I will even interrupt my reading to do that, but for the most part deep reading remains for me the welcome counterbalance to sitting in front of the computer. So I would say, if you have Mr. Carr's problem, make yourself sit and read a book every day for a specified period. Once the habit takes hold again, it will stay.
I think the solution to this is just a little discipline. As I have pointed out in some talks I've given, I have always read a lot of books, but never more than when I became a book review editor. The effect of that on me was that I largely lost the capacity to enjoy purely passive entertainment. I simply can't watch most TV programs. Movies have to grab me quickly or else I'll get bored and wish I were home reading. (I would have walked out of Reprise yesterday afternoon if I had realized Debbie found it as tedious as I did.) TV news shows - and, alas, newspapers - fail to hold my interest also because - thanks to the web, actually - I know how selective and tendentious their reports have become. Sometimes, when I'm reading, I make a mental note to look up something on the web, and sometimes I will even interrupt my reading to do that, but for the most part deep reading remains for me the welcome counterbalance to sitting in front of the computer. So I would say, if you have Mr. Carr's problem, make yourself sit and read a book every day for a specified period. Once the habit takes hold again, it will stay.
As we always say, don't blame the medium for the message. People can always be stupid if they want to be, however they do it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I agree about your solution; or at least I wonder whether it's quite so straightforward. Cognitive studies would be useful, since Carr may be on to something in terms of brain plasticity. And we're not the generation growing up with these media.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is not stupidity, but the modes of thought.
You could be right, Lee. Maybe it is generational - though Carr and others he mentions obviously were book readers once. I figure it's another example of use it or lose it. There have been changes like this in the past, though. Yo may recall St. Augustine's noting how St. Ambrose habitually reading silently and not aloud (of course, there is some dispute as to how unusual this was). I wonder if the change from scroll to pages had any discernible effect on the nature of reading or writing. I think the solution overall is to cultivate a fluency in all methods.
ReplyDeleteNot long after I became book-review editor for, as we used to say, a Major Metropolitan Daily, I discovered I did not enjoy reading novels the way I had in my previous existence. The change happened with nonfiction, too, but mostly I felt it with novels. I still LIKED reading them, but I did not abandon myself to their pleasures as I always had before. I read more critically. Some might say that was an advance in my thinking, but I do not see it that way; I see it as a corrupting intellectualization of an instinctual pleasure, if you will pardon the professorial jargon. I have not been book-review editor of a Major Metropolitan Daily for many years, but I have not been able to fully return to reading the way I wish I could read. It does work with re-reading of old novels, so I do that a lot. On the other hand, and weirdly, movies -- which I used to condescend to -- I like more and more. Televison, too, but I have always been an avid TV viewer. After years of trying, I CANNOT read for very long online. If something is very absorbing, I will print it out and read it that way. It has to be terribly absorbing, because print cartridges are expensive. As for newspapers, which I love to read, I still prefer the print version, which, please God, will last at least as long as I do.
ReplyDeleteThere is some further interesting debate at The Edge (Plato's complaint about books!), based on Foreman's The Pancake People. Don't miss Rebecca Goldstein's comments.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html
Also Rushkoff's, I meant to add!
ReplyDelete