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The Internet: Friend or Foe?

July 1st, 2010 by Carol Troy. Posted in Entertainment, Industry Expertise

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal said that people who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. Adding to my growing anxiety, it said that people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time. 

It’s always fun to talk about change intellectually, but when it comes right down to it, we are all creatures of habit, and significant change makes us all more anxious until it becomes part of who we are

So, it helped to understand that while the Internet is revolutionizing the way the world works, the anxiety about change is not new. I learned that every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people who are accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear, the article said, dates back to at least the invention of movable type.

“As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.”

Sound familiar?

We are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, in which digital media can connect the more than 1 billion Internet users worldwide with the click of a mouse. The article contends that this linking of minds and information will free up time for us, giving the educated people on the planet a trillion hours a year of free time to spend doing things they care about. If we spent the bulk of our time in the 20^th century watching television, then that tiny fraction of time freed up now from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.

Think about the time we used to spend researching things that were important to us personally and professionally. Now, if we have a question about our health, or the capital of some obscure country, we can find the answer on the Internet in a matter of seconds. Is some of this information mediocre? Probably. But the article contends that while of course there is a lot of dumb stuff online, there is also lots of dumb stuff in book stores.

On the other hand, one can relate to the concerns of those who contend that the innate bias of the human brain is to be distracted. Our predisposition is to be aware of as much of what’s going on around us as possible.

Optimists contend that the task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is “social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech.” Pessimists contend that our mental discipline is in jeopardy.

I’m with the optimists.