by Mark Hurst
Kevin Kelly on how the Internet has changed him
January 21, 2010 in Usability by Mark Hurst
Kevin Kelly has a different take on bit literacy than what’s in my book, and as always he’s thought-provoking. It’s well worth reading the whole piece; here’s an excerpt:
If alphabetic literacy can change how we think, imagine how Internet literacy and 10 hours per day in front of one kind of screen or another is changing our brains.
… In response to this incessant barrage of bits, the culture of the Internet has been busy unbundling larger works into minor snippets for sale. Music albums are chopped up and sold as songs … Newspapers become twitter posts. I happily swim in this rising ocean of fragments.
While I rush into the Net to hunt for these tidbits, or to surf on its lucid dream, I’ve noticed a different approach to my thinking. My thinking is more active, less contemplative. Rather than begin a question or hunch by ruminating aimlessly in my mind, nourished only by my ignorance, I start doing things. I immediately, instantly go.
Really well-written piece. Still, I wonder whether Internet-inspired, fragmented “active thinking” is where we want to go as a society. Everything is an inch deep; no one has time to go any further before they get distracted by the next thing. Is there still a place for people who choose to turn off, let the bits go, and ruminate a bit, perhaps even aimlessly? Or are they hopelessly behind the times?
I’m reading a 900-page Civil War history right now and am learning things that can’t be reduced to a Twitter post or Youtube snippet. What’s more, the many hours I’m spending in this one book prevent me from monitoring the infinite bitstreams online while I’m doing so. Am I dangerously out of the loop while I read the book?
I just wonder if there’s a middle road: one in which people can decide when to turn on and engage the bits – in the very ways Kevin describes! – and when to turn off and be old-fashioned human beings just using their brains and non-augmented senses. This middle way – the ability to do either, at will, and to be good at both – is the essence of bit literacy. We need both.
