Monday, August 18, 2008

Ouch! This hits too close to home

Ken Myers (MARS HILL AUDIO) in an article titled "That's why they call them browsers" writes on the detrimental effect that Internet-based communications has on learning and especially deep reading. Here's a summary pieced together from a few quotes that hit me the hardest.

"Carr observes that deep reading--reading that is more like prayer than basketball--is deliberately discouraged by the structure of the Web and in the business models of the Web's reigning powers. 'The faster we surf across the Web--the more links we click and pages we view--the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to deed us advertisements.'"

"We are constantly lured from the important and profound to the distacting, 'interesting', piquant."

"He touches everything brought within easy reach of his mind by the constantly increasing means of transportation, information, education, and amusement, but he doesn't really absorb anything. He contents himself with having 'heard about it', he labels it with some current catchword, and shoves it aside for the next. He is a hollow man and tries to fill his emptiness with constant, reckless activity."

This article is a call to action, but I'm not sure how to go about making the change. Any ideas on how to avoid the pitfalls described here without getting completely off the Information Superhighway?

Read the whole thing.

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