A Battle of Wits On the Net's Effect On the Mind 218
An anonymous reader writes "There's a fascinating duel going on between two Harvard-associated authors, Steven Pinker and Nicholas Carr, on the topic of the Net's influence on the mind. In a New York Times op-ed, Pinker criticizes Carr's argument, as laid out in his new book The Shallows, that our use of the Net is encouraging us to become distracted, superficial thinkers. The Net and other digital technologies 'are the only things that will keep us smart,' writes Pinker. In a response on his blog, Carr tears apart Pinker's argument, claiming that Pinker's examples should actually make us even more worried about the possible 'ill effects' the Net is having on our minds. Carr concludes, 'We're training ourselves, through repetition, to be facile skimmers, scanners, and message-processors — important skills, to be sure — but, perpetually distracted and interrupted, we're not training ourselves in the quieter, more attentive modes of thought: contemplation, reflection, introspection, deep reading, and so forth.' Behind the debate is the deeper controversy over whether the human brain is fundamentally adaptable ('neuroplasticity') or genetically locked into patterns of behavior ('evolutionary psychology')."
Re:we were scooped on this one (Score:5, Informative)
Re:depends on a person (Score:1, Informative)
Most people have never been, are not and will never be deep thinkers able to contemplate beyond the moment, that's not what most people are by their nature, they are mostly very involved with the current and cannot bother to think at all beyond an established routine.
Cynical but true. Many years ago I read an article in Advertising Age that lamented the fact that some 15% of Americans would not be reached by conventional USA advertising, & reaching that 15% would require an estimated 6 times the amount spent to reach the other 85%. The magical 15% were described as intellectual, having a well defined value system, & made decisions based on analysis of the return on investment of a potential purchase. The other 85% could easily be reached by emotionally based advertising. I consider this another indicator of the same point.
I lament the overwhelming ratio of gossip to news, & the proclivity of web presences to publish words designed to increase click-thru while containing no information.
But, the opposite - having no such web resource at all, is much worse.
So, figuratively speaking, caveat emptor!
Re:we were scooped on this one (Score:3, Informative)
Signal to noise is very low here. There are other places with equally informed people and far fewer dummies (though most are well-meaning).
Re:Battle of Wits? (Score:3, Informative)
The fundamental argument they are having is whether or not deep thinkers learn to be deep thinkers or if they are born to be deep thinkers. If thinking deeply is a learned behavior, then Carr may have a good argument. Then you move on to the specifics of whether or not the Internet promotes skimming or thinking deeply (my opinion is it depends greatly on where you go on the internet). If deep thinkers are born that way, then it doesn't matter.
The argument seems more subtle than that. Carr thinks that deep thinking is learned (or at least, promoted) through old methods of media consumption, but that our new methods of consumption are ruining this ability. Pinker also thinks that deep thinking is a learned behaviour, but that it is taught (and learned) in the institutions where it is most needed, in particular in universities.
Pinker's not worried about recent changes, because he's confident that people who need these skills pick them up, and uses increasing success in sciences as evidence that nothing is going too wrong. Carr doesn't believe this evidence is sufficient, since he believes that modern science may not need deep thinking for its advances. That claim seems to severely underestimate the difficulty of doing good science, or even average science, and seems trivially false.
Really though, Carr values "deep thinking" in and of itself, and doesn't care if people who need it can do it. He's worried that the general population as a whole will not be able to think deeply on anything, but instead will become light "skimmers" of information. It seems to me that the ability to skim and critically combine information from multiple sources is incredibly important now, maybe more important than the "deep thinking" Carr promotes.
I definitely side with Pinker here. The skills are always around for those who want or need them. Nothing about our current consumption habits prevents us from learning them or using our self-control and employing them. Carr should be deeply uncomfortable with the amount of information we need to wade through day in day out, and realise that people are just adapting to do the best they can in our modern environment.