In a remarkable recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly Nicholas Carr admitted that he can no longer immerse himself in substantial books and longer articles in the way he once did. “What the net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” he wrote. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swift-moving stream of particles.”I think it may have the hallmarks of a 'moral panic' article. (However it's probably quite a good teaching resource ...)
If the culprit is obvious, so is the primary victim of this radically reduced attention span: the narrative, the long-form story, the tale. Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment
There are various holes in the argument. Like the fact that much of what is happening on blogs, twitter etc is storytelling: people are narrating their own lives and those of others around them. The point about long stories is less telling when we realise that the modern novel is -well- modern: I've just been commending the Confession of St Patrick to some students, pointing out that it doesn't take long to read; people didn't write 'War and Peace' -sized tomes before printing and the turn to the introspective conscience. At least the author recognises this in the last paragraph. It's really attention span he's worried about, but I think the jury's still out on that one: we need to work out what the new technologies are doing to our sensoria in dialogue with culture and it's too early to tell for sure; my guess is that ADD aside, we have the same attention capabilities, we just use them differently and there will be upsides and downsides to that.
In fact, it's worth looking at an article, by Jamais Cascio, published about a year after Carr's which responds to the concerns in much the same way, only in more depth and naming what may be becoming the change to our mental reflexes: fluid intelligence. Like me, he's concerned that it's too early to tell for sure. However, he goes on to make a few tentative explorations of the kinds of effects mind-enhancing drugs and technologies could have; this is important territory and, given the speed of change, not too early for some of us to be developing perspectives to be able to assess the matters as they present -without the moral panic reaction of 'new/different=bad'. He ends with this intriguing couple of paras.
Hmmmm. Noocene sounds a bit like there's an influence from Teilhard de Chardin: noosphere ...The bad news is that these divergent paths may exacerbate cultural divides created by already divergent languages and beliefs. National rivalries often emphasize cultural differences, but for now we’re all still standard human beings. What happens when different groups quite literally think in very, very different ways?
The good news, though, is that this diversity of thought can also be a strength. Coping with the various world-historical dangers we face will require the greatest possible insight, creativity, and innovation. Our ability to build the future that we want—not just a future we can survive—depends on our capacity to understand the complex relationships of the world’s systems, to take advantage of the diversity of knowledge and experience our civilization embodies, and to fully appreciate the implications of our choices. Such an ability is increasingly within our grasp. The Nöocene awaits.
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