Dumb and dumber, part 2
13/02/2008
The new Nobel laureate novelist Doris Lessing says the internet is making us dumb. What do you think?
Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications
Well that’s quite a generalisation. It is common for older generations to obsess about tradition(s), and not realise that whether we like it or not, times and people change. Just one way that you learn and wish to know more is by communicating; talking to people and sharing stories. If the internet is a conduit for this, how does it make us dumb exactly? I actually feel that the spiralling use of slang (oral and writing) began before mobile phones arrived, so pointing this solely at the internet is harsh.
There is no doubt that the internet and related technologies have impacted future generations, but the challenges lie with us (and dare I say older generations) to guide them and ensure that traditions are not forgotten. We are all more locally connected and that’s the beauty of the internet; bringing together cultures and different ways of life quickly and easily.
It’s obvious to me that we have benefited greatly in educating, learning, experiencing and sharing information and knowledge with the web. With so many other mediums also acting as catalysts, there is wider reach and the potential to touch new audiences. This would not have been possible without the internet and therefore we need to embrace this change while simultaneously embracing how our cultures evolve. We need to include our youth – guiding them to ensure that what has transpired enriches them and they take on board where we are heading as a (global) nation.
The hustle, bustle and queues in bookstores reassures me that there are varying generations still exercising their grey matter with ‘traditional formats’, and certainly doing their very best to avoid being dumb. Doris Lessings’ observations are worth noting and are a good heads up, albeit perhaps a little premature and sensitive. Without a doubt, the key is merging old school traditions with technologies to present interesting
learning to new generations. This is something that I experience around my brother’s home life (with his children) and what I see of the aspirations of educational initiatives.
Social media and comms expert
Rachel Hawkes
Elemental Communications
I’ve read Lessing’s acceptance speech in its entirety (rather than the snippets The Guardian and other publications chose to highlight), and taken in context. Nowhere does she state that the internet is making us dumb.
At the heart of her speech, I believe, was that people used to devour information. They used to ‘soak it up’ like sponges from books; spending all day reading, and learning. Before our lives were so dominated by
technology, when we as a society had more time and were not constantly ‘switched on’, we used to crave knowledge. We have become complacent: we know where we can find the information at the drop of a hat, so it seems less important to learn it in the first instance.
Lessing draws comparisons with societies that have yet to see our technological advances – such as her birth country, Zimbabwe – and how that thirst for the knowledge contained in books is still present and still so strong.
It’s sad, really.
She makes references to a fragmenting society, to ‘specialisms’ and to how our world is changing quicker than we can fathom – how can we (justifiably) disagree with that? It’s true, isn’t it? I am somewhat dumbfounded that she is being so grossly taken out of context.
As a society, we are very ageist. We are quick to judge that the elderly are ‘losing the plot’ so that we may dismiss their opinions and concerns at whim, and that our youth have no life experience, “so what would they know?”
More eloquently than I ever could, Lessing expresses her concerns about how rapidly our world is changing, and how we are placing less importance on the value of books (I would refer you to The Big Question – Amazon’s Kindle). You cannot deny that the internet has impacted this, but so has television, mobile phones, video games etc, and it is surely, as Lessing says, a revolution: “What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution.” She then talks about the “printing revolution” and how this changed our society (much slower than the internet has) and how we went along blindly without questioning whether its impact would be good or bad. As we are doing now with the internet.
To quote a dear friend and colleague, “Yes, information is power – but the real power comes with knowing how to apply the information.” The internet is therefore an incredibly powerful resource, but it doesn’t make us smarter.
Ecommerce specialist
Chris Barling
Actinic
Having lived over 50 years and worked in the IT industry for much of that time, I now have quite a collection of questionable things said by smart people about technological advance. This includes an amusing comparison of the internet with CB radio, given to me by a successful venture capitalist back in 1996.
Sometimes we all suffer from a lack of understanding of how our own familiar world is a result of technological evolution. The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1436 is an ironic example of this, given Doris Lessing’s vocation. Until Gutenberg weaved his magic, reading and writing were the privilege of the few. Most people had to rely on knowledge and stories handed down by their elders, and that was the only source.
The subsequent availability of books changed all of this, but no doubt the specialists whose control of knowledge was being broken would have explained the inanities of books and how they made people dumb. No doubt the scribes of the day would add how “common” the book was. No doubt the death of storytelling was predicted. No doubt the criticisms were as ill-founded as the ones we hear today.
Come on Doris, don’t blame the internet for the vacuous rubbish you see published online. Just as the printing press spawned trash novels, the internet has given rise to junk bloggers. Just as the printed novel allowed us to enjoy your work, the internet will offer success to those who become your worthy successors. And no doubt some of them will reach the same pinnacle that you have.
Applications guru
Roger Greene
Ipswitch
The internet is a medium that makes it easier to publish and acquire content. Over time, that will add to the world’s intelligence, though it will be a noisy mix of nonsense, untruths, entertainment and substance of high and low quality. Lessing completely misses the point when she attacks blogging as a waste of time. Blogging is just a medium for the written word. That’s like saying books are good, but newspapers and magazines are frivolous, or vice versa. It’s not the medium for the written word that is relevant – it is the content itself, and that, as always, will vary according the writer’s skill and their insight into the subject.
Accessibility expert
Julie Howell
Fortune Cookie
News of the death of the book has been greatly exaggerated. The web is a larger, more accessible library and all who have full and equal access to it can enjoy a world of information, opinion, news and opportunity for self-expression like never before. What we should worry about isn’t how the internet might adversely affect our ability to learn, but how those with power might seek to use it to censor us, spy on us and control us. In 2008, ordinary folk enjoy unprecedented access to information thanks to the web, information that enables us to live richer, safer, healthier and more fulfilling lives. Our task over the next few years is to defend and protect this right of access and to resist measures that take control of web content from the hands of the many and put it once more into the hands of the affluent few. Ignorance is one of the greatest enemies of our civil liberties and Lessing’s view does seem to indicate a narrow view of the power of the web to transform people’s lives for the better.
Domain name expert
Eleanor Bradley
Nominet
Doris Lessing is not the first and surely won’t be the last person of some academic standing to blame the internet for the ‘dumbing down’ of society. Her particular gripe seems to be in relation to the internet’s ability to ‘seduce’ us with ‘inanities’ and distract us from educating ourselves by reading books. The same could easily said for many other modern distractions of course, not least the television.
Whilst there are undoubtedly many time-wasting, unproductive and addictive web sites around (the mind boggles at what Ms Lessing would make of Facebook and the rest of the social networking phenomena) it is just as easy to argue that the pursuit of knowledge has been made far easier and much more rewarding with the advent of the web. “Never has so much been available so easily and quickly to so many,” Churchill may have said, had he had the opportunity to pass judgement.
As for the Nobel laureate novelist’s assertion that “writers do not come out of houses without books,” there is no evidence at all to suggest that the internet generation spurns the written word. On the contrary, if a child wishes to read a great novel they’ve heard mentioned at school, they can read a review of it, order a copy of it, read it and post their own review of it within a matter of days thanks to the power of the web.
Knowledge is literally available at our fingertips – we just need to be inspired to seek it.
Content specialist
Siim Vips
Modera
To a certain degree, Doris Lessing has a point but I think she misses the main one.
Having gone through primary school without internet access and moved on to studying at university during the internet boom I can confidently say that having ready access to the internet makes learning easier; information is more accessible and more vast.
Where Mrs Lessing raises a very valid point is that we do not memorise information any more. We know how and where to find the answer to any question we may have, and we rely on this rather than our memory. But then again, if we can get answers to specific questions by accessing the web on our handheld device is there really a need for remembering information like we used to – or have humans evolved from there?
Web app expert
Deri Jones
SciVisum
She is right, yet she is not right.
As Doris says, there are many people who spend hours on the ‘trivia’ of the internet – content-free blogging, or chat, or on celebrity news portals. The ease of hooking up to other internet users with the same interests, or even exact same views, means that people can easily be ‘ghettoised’ in a community with a very narrow view of the world.
But on the other hand, the internet is a fantastic resource for those who want to find out new things, and have a curiosity about the world. Wikipedia is just one example of many locations that are a great resource for my kids to follow an interest. They may start with a book’s name, or a historic event, but the internet allows them to explore and discover everything and everyone connected with that event.
For myself, after the Mohammed cartoon controversy, I realised I knew very little about Islam, and the internet was great for finding out more. Yes there were lots of opinions on all sides, and yes lots of pinches of salt were needed, but at the end of the month my world horizon had expanded hugely – and I’m sure Doris would approve.
But look at the online resources for musicians now, compared to when I learned the guitar 30 years ago. Today there are oodles of free music scores and chord-books for any song you like; exposure to styles from all over the world; clever software that can provide a backing band as you jam over the top: software to slow down your favourite guitarists’ solos, so you can work out what they are doing note by note, etc.
Overall, I share her concerns and wonder whether we will end up with a very split society: those who explore the internet with an enquiring mind and are far more world-aware than their parents, and those who get all their news and opinions from a small range of blogs and portals, and become dangerously ignorant and unengaged from their real-life communities and the world around them.
