It’s hard to create an argument against a medium while using it. Clary Shirky discusses this conundrum when he describes the Abbot of Sponheim, defending scribes in a text proliferated by the printing press. “The abbot’s book praised the scribes, while its printed form damned them.”
Despite this, I intend on proving my point.
Take a look at this.
Now, this could be a video that supports my argument or a video of cats doing stupid things, either way it doesn’t matter. You will more than likely click on that link and see what’s on the other side of it because I told you to. This is a prime example of the arrogance and distracting nature of the web. We live in a world where even a well-rounded argument cannot be sufficiently gleaned from an article. Not only do these hyperlinked potholes abound on the web but we now expect them. Our browsers adopted tabs so that we can conveniently pile them up and flip-flop between them.
I meant to give you this.
This Pew study has a number of interesting points to it but one they stress to make is that blogging in the younger generations of internet users has been on the decline.
Despite this, I intend on proving my point.
Take a look at this.
Now, this could be a video that supports my argument or a video of cats doing stupid things, either way it doesn’t matter. You will more than likely click on that link and see what’s on the other side of it because I told you to. This is a prime example of the arrogance and distracting nature of the web. We live in a world where even a well-rounded argument cannot be sufficiently gleaned from an article. Not only do these hyperlinked potholes abound on the web but we now expect them. Our browsers adopted tabs so that we can conveniently pile them up and flip-flop between them.
I meant to give you this.
This Pew study has a number of interesting points to it but one they stress to make is that blogging in the younger generations of internet users has been on the decline.
Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline—a development that may be related to the quickly-growing popularity of social network sites.
They go on to make the point that older generations are actually increasing their internet use, especially on blogs. Why to some this point is pertinent, I’d rather ignore it for now as I believe the older generations influence on youth’s online behavior is minimal as evidenced by this chart from Pew.
In fact, the opposite seems to be suggested by Pew’s data shows that use of social media sites by users age 46-64 has increased by over 25%
However, what is applicable is the switch from long-form blogs, like Blogger or LiveJournal, to the short and sweet forms of status updates or tweets. If the internet has spawned more and more examples of ways to distract its users, from Farmville to Funny Cats, perhaps blogs are just another casualty of our lack of attention.
Yet, there are some that would look toward this as a good sign. They might argue, how is attention less accessible now than before? They would say today’s youth are privy to mountains of information, in tweets, status updates, blog quips, article summaries and aggregated content, and they somehow find a way to process it all and retain it.
Author, Steven Johnson, argued that information overload allows our brain to build new pathways to process information faster. While his book never approached the internet’s potential benefits one could conceivably piece an opinion together based on his approach to other mediums such as television and videogames.
Jamais Cascio, who cites Johnson, does just that in his article, “Get Smarter,” saying that, “The trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy.” He finds that some occupations may have to suffer or dissolve completely from the changes wrought by the internet. The rest of his article sounds like a hypothetical android world.
Perhaps this is what we have to look forward to. Cascio describes a world where brain augmentation is a snack food and complex digital assistants are so commonplace as to “not even merit comment.” But, this, he says, is probably an age 50 years or so in the future. So don’t expect R2-D2 to beam into your garage and suddenly transform into a Chevy Camaro.
The argument appears to have changed however. It is no longer a question of how the world’s technologies will change society into a global online community. It’s not even a question of when. The argument itself is over. As Clay Shirky succinctly puts it, “the future belongs to those who take the present for granted.”
But, while I hold his small, orange book “Here Comes Everybody” in my hands and read the printed words pressed onto off-white parchment, I find myself hoping for that change to slow down. I hope it doesn’t consume the printed word that I’ve grown to love as quickly as it seems to be. If it does than I truly will hate the internet, despite all its benefits and I don’t think I’m alone on that one.
In fact, the opposite seems to be suggested by Pew’s data shows that use of social media sites by users age 46-64 has increased by over 25%
However, what is applicable is the switch from long-form blogs, like Blogger or LiveJournal, to the short and sweet forms of status updates or tweets. If the internet has spawned more and more examples of ways to distract its users, from Farmville to Funny Cats, perhaps blogs are just another casualty of our lack of attention.
Yet, there are some that would look toward this as a good sign. They might argue, how is attention less accessible now than before? They would say today’s youth are privy to mountains of information, in tweets, status updates, blog quips, article summaries and aggregated content, and they somehow find a way to process it all and retain it.
Author, Steven Johnson, argued that information overload allows our brain to build new pathways to process information faster. While his book never approached the internet’s potential benefits one could conceivably piece an opinion together based on his approach to other mediums such as television and videogames.
Jamais Cascio, who cites Johnson, does just that in his article, “Get Smarter,” saying that, “The trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy.” He finds that some occupations may have to suffer or dissolve completely from the changes wrought by the internet. The rest of his article sounds like a hypothetical android world.
Perhaps this is what we have to look forward to. Cascio describes a world where brain augmentation is a snack food and complex digital assistants are so commonplace as to “not even merit comment.” But, this, he says, is probably an age 50 years or so in the future. So don’t expect R2-D2 to beam into your garage and suddenly transform into a Chevy Camaro.
The argument appears to have changed however. It is no longer a question of how the world’s technologies will change society into a global online community. It’s not even a question of when. The argument itself is over. As Clay Shirky succinctly puts it, “the future belongs to those who take the present for granted.”
But, while I hold his small, orange book “Here Comes Everybody” in my hands and read the printed words pressed onto off-white parchment, I find myself hoping for that change to slow down. I hope it doesn’t consume the printed word that I’ve grown to love as quickly as it seems to be. If it does than I truly will hate the internet, despite all its benefits and I don’t think I’m alone on that one.
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