Spectator

In the debate over Google’s effect on humanity, everyone is missing one big issue

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Douglas Bell


image for In the debate over Google’s effect on humanity, everyone is missing one big issue
Yes, again: The cover story that
launched a thousand blog posts.

For the second time this week, I’m taking my lead from The Atlantic (it’s the best magazine in the world right now, making even The New Yorker appear precious and overwrought). Unsurprisingly, the two articles that stirred me to blog were both (a) about the Web and (b) rife with fundamental, flummoxing misperception. I’ve already written about Mark Bowden’s piece on the Web-induced demise of The Wall Street Journal. Now for the big kahuna: Nicholas Carr’s take on Google. Titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” this cover story has been sticking in bloggers’ craws all week, inspiring them to pee on hydrants to mark their view on the current state of media, the Web and the human condition. Carr’s view is clear: the hypertext world of Google is slowly eroding our capacity for sustained contemplation, thereby flattening our collective intelligence. One thing is also clear: the piece has an enormous blind spot.

Some agree with Carr, of course:

Is this a new way of thinking? And will it affect the way we read and write? If blogging is corrosive, the same could be said for Grand Theft Auto, texting and Facebook messaging, on which a younger generation is currently being reared. But the answer is surely yes—and in ways we do not yet fully understand. What we may be losing is quietness and depth in our literary and intellectual and spiritual lives.
—Andrew Sullivan in The Times of London

Some disagree:

Maybe the reason why Nick and so many other literati are losing their patience with long form information is that it is so fundamentally inefficient and inferior to connected bits of information.

You look at a book, read a book, and you easily perceive a coherent whole. You look at all the information on that book’s topic on the Web, all connected, and you can’t see the sum of the parts—but we are starting to get our minds around it. We can’t yet recognize the superiority of this networked thinking process because we’re measuring it against our old linear thought process.

Nick romanticizes the “contemplation” that comes with reading a book. But it’s possible that the output of our old contemplation can now be had in larger measure through a new entirely non-linear process.
—Scott Karp at seekingalpha.com

But here’s what both sides in the debate missed: Google’s motivation in all this is money. For all their drivel about corporate responsibility (Google’s motto is the impossibly pretentious “Don’t be evil”), Google “monetizes” (lovely word that) what Karp calls “networked thinking” by charging fractions of whatever currency to place links nearer to the front page of a given search.

And guess what? Google couldn’t care less whether this new form of thought is our salvation or our damnation. In business speak, they’re “content agnostic.” The debate about which is the better mode of rumination for optimal human development—algorithmic/hypertext or monastic/contemplative—is nothing but a sideshow.

So long as the dollar calls the tune at Google, it seems to me that how we read—Carr’s po-faced lament notwithstanding—is somewhat less problematic than whether what we read is the straight goods or just another ad campaign done up in digital drag.

• Is Google Making Us Stupid? [The Atlantic]
• Idea Watch: Is Google Making Us Stupid? [Wall Street Journal]
• Google is giving us pond-skater minds [The Times]
• Connecting the Dots of the Internet Revolution [Seeking Alpha]
• How Google ate my brain [Globe and Mail]

Comments

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GravityLevity2 June 20, 2008 at 3 p.m.

Carr in his article does talk about how capitalism and the profit motive have contributed to the fractured screen and the urging us to move on to another link and another and another as often as possible.
Before the Internet I skimmed books and articles AND read deeply, depending on teh quality of what I was reading and whether I was skimming for info nuggets or an overview or reading for a continuous argument or out of fascination with the narrative or subject.
I have done the same on the internet, but notice a lot of documents on it not really built for sustained reading.

Another reason for the difference is, I think, the difference in the way we relate physically to hardcopy (a bunch of paper), and to even the the most portable of computers. It is harder to remain really physically comfortable and relaxed for a long while reading a computer screen. You can't change your position as much. You can't lie on your back as easily. You can't hold the screen to your face, so much as set the screen on a surface and move your face to within reading distance of it. It is harder to read the screen when you are walking from one room to another or one chair to another. So it is harder to sustain attention on written text. It is easier to lose attention, and then when your focus is back, just skip on to something else.

And unlike with a book, the something else is easily at hand on the Internet (a positive), and unlike with a magazine, there are a lot more something elses at hand on the Internet.

Casey June 21, 2008 at 9:31 p.m.

GravityLevity2 June 20, 2008 at 3 p.m.

Your long winded commentary, while completely self evident and another example of you blowing off hot air, could have easily been stated in basically 3 sentences or less. Surely you must have more productive things to do with your time......like maybe read a book? No one cares that you can change positions while reading a book or magazine or lie on your back - yadda, yadda, yadda.......

GravityLevity2 June 22, 2008 at 1:42 p.m.

casey: "No one cares that you can change positions while reading a book or magazine or lie on your back"

You appeared to have misssed my point, casey: This flexibility allowed by hardcopy is one thing that makes it easier to read hardcopy with prolonged attention. The article in the Atlantic didn't mention this, and thus its analysis of the Internet vs. print seemed unbalanced. Often people come up with unbalanced theories and analyses by overlooking the obvious.

As for your critique of my writing style, I trust you yourself will follow your own advice and confine yourself to terse, Eastwoodian posts from now on.

For instance, your opening, could as well (or better) have read: "Your self-evident and typically long-winded commentary could have easily been stated in 3 sentences or less."
Or even: "As usual, your obvious, wordy post could have been put in two or three sentences."

Casey June 22, 2008 at 10:20 p.m.

GravityLevity2 June 22, 2008 at 1:42 p.m.

Truly, I haven't the time nor the patience to wade through the majority of your posts, although I will give you one compliment of sorts - your posts are for the most part vastly more informed and perhaps better worded than the majority of those who post here, with the exception of Jeanne, Jade_lee and Fintan.
Anyway, thanks for response.

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