Google
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
June 17, 2008 Filed in: The real
world |
Ideas
So asks Nicholas Carr in the cover article of the
July/August Atlantic Monthly.
I put this here not just because i't's an
interesting and worthy read, but because it
resonates with me, both the good and the bad. The
good is how the technology has quite fundamentally
changed my ability to write: I simply couldn't do
what I do with pen and paper, though like many, I
still like to print out an intermediate draft now
and then to read through end-to-end (but that may
be simply a lack of the right technology to enable
the same ability). The bad is that I, too, have
slowly, over a decade, gone from voracious book
reader to being barely able to keep up with print
publications like the Economist and
Atlantic Monthly. Perhaps the
glass-is-half-full explanation is just that my
information consumption has actually gone up; it's
just different. The article's mention of
neurological rewiring echos Marc Prensky's thought
in Digital natives, digital
immigrants part 2.
On the other hand, I can't say I resonate with the glass-is-half-empty predictions of the article. Change of the sort described just is. If indeed it's a problem - and I don't think so - then the genie is already out of the bottle and all we can do is manage the effects. Wired Magazine's cover article The End of Science and two related articles, Tap Into the 12-Million-Teraflop Handheld Megacomputer and Supercomputing Power Hits the Desktop, Minus the Software, curiously speak in some way to this issue from a different perspective.
On the other hand, I can't say I resonate with the glass-is-half-empty predictions of the article. Change of the sort described just is. If indeed it's a problem - and I don't think so - then the genie is already out of the bottle and all we can do is manage the effects. Wired Magazine's cover article The End of Science and two related articles, Tap Into the 12-Million-Teraflop Handheld Megacomputer and Supercomputing Power Hits the Desktop, Minus the Software, curiously speak in some way to this issue from a different perspective.
Privacy duo
April 27, 2007 Filed in: Privacy
These articles I’ve found worth reading, not so much
for the scare value but to be thinking about what
needs to be thought of. First is the October 2006
Mother Jones article Is Google Evil?
Second is a wonderful article on privacy and the net generation in New York magazine, Say Everything. Though it covers well-trodden ground, it does so admirably. I particularly like this: "Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not."
Second is a wonderful article on privacy and the net generation in New York magazine, Say Everything. Though it covers well-trodden ground, it does so admirably. I particularly like this: "Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not."