Digital disrupts all in its wake. Even our language is not safe.
Consider the word “content.” It’s a word I have adopted to clarify my professional specialty.
In April 2006, I was promoted from senior copywriter to content director at BFG Communications in Hilton Head. I was head of my own department, the content department, which set about filling vast digital spaces, a.k.a. our client’s websites, with content.
Given my history with and attachment to the word content, Tim Kreider’s opinion piece, “Slaves of the Internet, Unite!” got my attention when he turned his argument to what words mean and how they build or destroy real market value.
The first time I ever heard the word “content” used in its current context, I understood that all my artist friends and I — henceforth, “content providers” — were essentially extinct. This contemptuous coinage is predicated on the assumption that it’s the delivery system that matters, relegating what used to be called “art” — writing, music, film, photography, illustration — to the status of filler, stuff to stick between banner ads.
Most content, especially content made to sell, is in fact filler. Therefore, in the context of an advertising industry discussion, I am not grappling in the same way Kreider is with this problem. But he and I both agree that real writing must be called writing, not content. Same for real writers—they are writers not content producers or managers.
For me, this presents an important choose-your-words-wisely moment. Because content departments and content directors are not all that common, even today, so it’s not simple for me to easily convey my value to prospective buyers of David Burn-made content.
I was speaking to an old friend the other day. I thought how can my friend, or any friend help, me land new business when he or she doesn’t clearly understand what I do for a living?
“Hi, my name is David. I convey brand value.”
Sadly, especially for a writer, the above explanation and titles like copywriter or brand storyteller don’t do enough to communicate our market value. I am not sure there is much in the way of a workaround here.
I don’t want to over think this, but when you tell someone you are a writer, there’s an immediate suspicion (in gentler souls, a curiosity) about how you earn your way in the world. That’s likely why we come up with fancy words for what we do, or worse, long-winded explanations. It’s also why we work in fields like advertising and media.
Chris Brogan has unleashed a meme, or narrative construct, that helps sum up what you want to work on, change or improve in the coming year.
My friend, Dian Crawford, is participating in #mythreewords. Her three words are “Velocity, Simplicity and Laughter.” I had to consider my three words for a bit, but eventually landed on Grateful, Committed and Traditional.
Grateful. My mom is a glass-half-full person. But this trait did not come down to me via genetics or environment. I am quick to point out what is missing, rather than what is there. Can I change this about myself? I think I can, but it will take a realignment of sorts and a more spiritual approach. Speaking of, we watched this little film last night called Happy. The filmmakers visited people around the world who are happy and the common denominator, in case after case, is close connections to family and friends. When you have these bonds at the center of your life–and to a large degree Darby and I do–you have much to be grateful for. So, I can look at my present work situation, for instance, and a) chastise myself for not earning more money and making a bigger name for myself in the four years since leaving my last job, or b) I can see that I am more successful now than ever, on the right path and that the money and recognition will come. Bottom line, I am grateful to make a living as a writer and thankful for all the people who help make this reality possible.
Committed. I have lots of ideas and my mind wanders. For most of my life my body wandered with it, from one state to the next, one job to the next and from one group of friends to the next. I am grateful for the depth and diversity of experiences, no question, but I’m also intentionally working to go deep, to connect and plant roots. Oregon may not be the perfect place for this, but no place is. Advertising may not be the perfect profession either. But since when is perfection required? What is required is confidence that being here in Oregon is right and good, that all can be achieved here, as a writer, a businessman and a person. On the writerly front, I will need to be more committed than ever, as my plans for 2013 are on the ambitious side. I intend to write fewer blog posts and more long-form pieces, including new short stories and a book about marketing. The plan is to write a chapter or story a week for 16 weeks starting now.
Traditional. I got a record player for Christmas this year and a collection of used records, including Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell, Katy Lied by Steely Dan and Happy To Be Just Like I Am, by Taj Mahal, among others. I grew up in an analog world, but I lost touch with it. I do not see losing tough with it as a positive. There’s no doubt that I was (and still am) genuinely excited by certain digital developments like push-button publishing and streaming radio. But it’s not all good. For me, it’s about using common sense and determining what is, and is not, an actual advance. Take cell phones. They suck as phones, but we accept the dropped calls, the spotty reception and lack of audio quality (to say nothing of the high prices) as the new norm. It’s stupid. You know what else is stupid? I was driving on I-5 today and this guy in the middle lane was going way too slow. I passed him on the right, as I approached my exit and I looked over to see him texting. On I-5 with cars and trucks everywhere going 60+ miles per hour. We’ve made some advances connected to digital culture, but we’ve also regressed. Of course, I can’t concern myself with which video games are rotting the minds of millions, or what other corrupt forces are at work. All I can do is pause, examine and evaluate for myself what I find valuable and what I do not. Increasingly, I see that Facebook and Twitter can be enriching, but there’s a cost attached–even if the cost is only time spent. I want to write and read books, not completely out of context microbursts from friends and strangers. Ergo, I will be grateful for and committed to our traditional works of American literature (like Moby Dick, which I have started to read on my Kindle).
It occurs to me now, I could change my three words to “Read Moby Dick” and call it good.
It took me eight years, but I finally did purchase and read every word of Phil Lesh’s autobiography, Searching for the Sound. I am glad I did, as Phil offers us his humanity and his immense mind with this telling. It’s also the only first person account of the formation of Grateful Dead by a band member.
As a fan of the band and its legendary bass player, I wanted to like this book. As a student of the 1960s, I wanted to like this book. And Lesh is an eloquent spokesman for his generation. The man is smart as a whip, which comes across in his music, naturally, but it also sails through in his prose.
I wanted to play in a way that heightened the beats by omission, as it were, by playing around them, in a way that added harmonic motion to the somewhat static chord progressions of the songs we were playing then. I wanted to play in a way that moved melodically but much more slowly than the lead melodies sung by the vocalists or played on guitar or keyboard. Contrast and complement: Each of us approached the music from a different direction, at angles to one another, like the spokes of a wheel.
I have long been astonished by Phil’s musical mind and his ability to play what’s in it. He invented a new way to play bass, and his new, inventive style fit perfectly with what Jerry Garcia was playing. Bring in the other spokes and you’ve got an extremely potent form of heavily amplified improvisational music.
Phil also writes candidly about his, and the band’s, use of LSD.
At one point, I looked over at Jerry and saw a bridge of light like a rainbow of a thousand colors streaming between us; and flowing back and forth across that bridge: three-dimensional musical notes—some swirling like the planet Jupiter rotating at 100 times normal speed, some like fuzzy little tennis balls with dozens of legs and feet (each foot wearing a different sock!), some striped like zebras, some like pool balls, some even rectangular or hexagonal, all brilliantly colored and evolving as they flowed, not only the notes that were being played, but all the possible notes that could have been played.
Throughout the text Phil’s ability to recall in detail the people, places, events and yes, even the psychedelic adventures of his youth, some 40 years after it all happened, is pretty amazing.
Later in the the book when my own direct experience of the band is a factor, I realize that while Phil’s finely honed details are plentiful, they are also highly selective, as well as totally personal. As it should be, the point is how plentiful and rich this narrative pool is. For instance, when Phil discusses the band’s Europe tour in October 1990, it’s a story about his family vacation. Nothing wrong with that, but my own (undocumented) stories from that particular trip are slightly more adventurous.
Today, we have books about Jerry from skilled biographers, we have Phil’s own take and there’s a smattering of efforts from fans, and from the academic community to describe and catalog the Grateful Dead experience. I feel like what’s missing is a platform for Deadheads to tell their own tales. I am envisioning a data-based structure where hundred of stories from each show can be curated, and possibly edited into a group writing experiment.
What really happened between the notes on a given night? Ask the hive mind. With so many real life stories, photos, video and drawings to pull from, the hive delivers fractal-like reflections of a place in time and space, 2000-plus times over. Also, these narrative accounts of Grateful Dead shows would be fun to match up against the audio recordings. We know what it sounded like on a particular night thanks to soundboard and audience tapes, but what did it feel like? The liner notes from fans can help answer that.
In Spring of 1977, The Paris Review, published an interview with Kurt Vonnegut.
The interview is a composite of four question and answer sessions with the writer, and edited by Vonnegut himself. Therefore, what he has to say in this “interview” is not as off-the-cuff as it might seem. Rather, it’s intentional, as most text-based exercises are.
INTERVIEWER
You have been a public relations man and an advertising man—
VONNEGUT
Oh, I imagine.
INTERVIEWER
Was this painful? I mean—did you feel your talent was being wasted, being crippled?
VONNEGUT
No. That’s romance—that work of that sort damages a writer’s soul. At Iowa, Dick Yates and I used to give a lecture each year on the writer and the free-enterprise system. The students hated it. We would talk about all the hack jobs writers could take in case they found themselves starving to death, or in case they wanted to accumulate enough capital to finance the writing of a book. Since publishers aren’t putting money into first novels anymore, and since the magazines have died, and since television isn’t buying from young freelancers anymore, and since the foundations give grants only to old poops like me, young writers are going to have to support themselves as shameless hacks. Otherwise, we are soon going to find ourselves without a contemporary literature. There is only one genuinely ghastly thing hack jobs do to writers, and that is to waste their precious time.
After studying anthropology at University of Chicago, Vonnegut took a job working in PR for General Electric. His choice to earn is only one reason why I love him, but it is an important one. “It was dishonorable enough that I perverted art for money. I then topped that felony by becoming, as I say, fabulously well-to-do,” Vonnegut reflects.
It’s wonderful to know that Vonnegut thinks having a hack job doesn’t hurt your writing, it just sucks up your time. One might argue then, that a writer with a hack job merely needs to make time for their real work, while simultaneously performing the tasks that pay. I might add here that a writer can also work to transcend the hackery. Sure, it can become a head-banger of a challenge to write ad copy, or news copy, that does its job and delivers on craft and artfulness. But it’s a pursuit that strengthens the writer, in my opinion.
I can see where Vonnegut, or another writer, might claim that transcending the hackery isn’t the point, the point is simply to make money and return home to your family and the book that’s growing there, trying desperately to be born. My counterpoint is why make such harsh lines between real writing and writing merely to earn? Why not write it all with great care?
Ray Bradbury is spectacular. His mind is immense and his advice for other writers is both generous and magnificent.
In 2001, Bradbury spoke at the Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. He was 80 years old at the time. Today is he 91.
During this talk, he says, “Writing is not a serious business, it’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. It is not work. If it’s work, stop it and do something else.”
“I’ve never worked a day in my life,” Bradbury says “The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me my joy.”
Bradbury prescribes a routine that includes writing one short story a week. He also suggests that we fill our minds with lots of ideas from all disciplines, and that we read one short story, one poem and one essay each night before bed. He cautions that most modern literature will not suffice, because it is crap. To avoid the crap trap, Bradbury suggests the short stories of Roald Dahl, Guy de Maupassant, John Cheever, Richard Matheson, Nigel Kneel, John Collier, Edith Wharton, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He also loves the essays of George Bernard Shaw, and suggests we locate a copy of Do we agree?: A debate between G. K. Chesterton and Bernard Shaw.
Bradbury favors the provocative statement, which make listening to him fun. For instance, he says writers should not attend college. He also says he doesn’t plan, or outline, a story. Rather, he discovers it as he writes.
Bradbury has a sign above his work station that reads “Don’t Think.” This reminds him to keep his intellect at bay, and feel his way through the narrative.
Frankly, I can’t get enough of this wise man’s counsel. Which is why I went from the above video to the following two treasures from the mid-1970s and 1963, respectively.
Another important note from this writer of Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and many other books and screenplays deals with the dispatching of doubters. He advises that a writer can’t have any such people in his or her life, and that these friends and/or family must be fired if they insist on negative evaluations of one’s chosen path.
“Instrumental in traveling is the participation in it, the belief in progress, the witnessing of passage.” – Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers’ first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, is a travel journal with a lot of internal gyrations, a.k.a. dialogue from the narrator, whose mind “hovers and churns.” I just finished reading the 400-page book on the Kindle, and now I want to reflect on some of its themes and stylistic devices.
Will, the protagonist and narrator, departs Chicago O’Hare with his best bud Hand, for Senegal, Morocco, Estonia and Latvia. The trip is motivated by their friend’s death in a car accident and the consequent desire to offload $80,000 that Will came by unexpectedly (thanks to his silhouette being used on a new lightbulb package).
Adam Mars-Jones of The Observer notes that the book “might be a bleak and uneasy satire on American ignorance and cultural consumerism, with Will’s and Hand’s currency-scattering mission only slightly exaggerating the ridiculousness of over-ambitious holidays – If-this-is-Monday-this-must-be-Tallinn-or-maybe-Riga. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the intention. The title of the book is mystical-technical (finally explained as the motto of the Jumping People, an apocryphal South American tribe), but the style is pushy-flashy, dedicated to producing elaborate effects.”
That’s a solid read by Mars-Jones. The two characters are ridiculous in the way that two “normal dudes” who grew up in Milwaukee might be. Hand and Will are not Wayne and Garth, but they’re not all that far away from these overly-exaggerated characters.
Eggers makes some interesting choices in the construction of the book. He indicates to the reader when Will is talking to himself by placing an em dash in front of a thought. So, you’ll be reading along in a plot-driven passage, and then be dealt a series of dashes, with inner imaginings of the somewhat paranoid, totally addled narrator.
Eggers also time shifts the story, and puts the narrative in Hand’s hands about two-thirds of the way in, before circling back around for a Will-narrated finish. Which is weird, and a bit frustrating because Hand contradicts the things we as readers have come to believe. It does work to shed more light on the situation, but it’s not a fine light, where all looks happy and good.
Ultimately, You Shall Know Our Velocity, is a book with a message. The message is don’t waste time. And don’t run from things, like time, that can’t be outrun. It’s a wonderful philosophy, delivered by clowns in this instance, but that’s okay. We don’t always want our philosophies from a professor, poet or pundit.
Digital Book World is running an interview with Seth Godin, author of several best selling business books, including Unleashing the Ideavirus, The Bootstrapper’s Bible, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Poke the Box, and more.
Here’s a slice of the interview, where Godin advises writers to walk way from their financial expectations.
Q. Many authors hear your message about being willing to give away their books for free, or to focus on spreading their message but their question is: “I’ve got rent to pay so how do I turn that into cash money?”
A. Who said you have a right to cash money from writing? I gave hundreds of speeches before I got paid to write one. I’ve written more than 4000 blog posts for free.
Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word – over.
I don’t know how these halcyon days of writerly bounty could be over, if they never existed in the first place. The great majority of writers have always struggled to earn their way in the world. They either work odd jobs like bartender or taxicab driver, or they find a way to apply themselves as a teacher, or in a commercial setting like advertising, publishing, journalism or entertainment.
The future is going to be filled with amateurs, says Godin. And Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, commenting on Godin’s piece, is right to note “the rise of the amateur, powered by the democratization of distribution provided by the Web and social media.” Although “amateur” sounds more and more archaic to my ear each day. I prefer the word “apprentice.” There’s pro, semi-pro and apprentice. Apprentice captures seriousness of intent, in a way amateur does not.
Certainly, there are plenty of amateur writers, amateur photographers, and so on. Which is great, people need enriching hobbies. But the premise is about getting paid to write, and that’s why it makes sense to reframe the discussion around pro, semi-pro and apprentice. These are the people hoping to make money from their writing, and the people equipped to do so, via a mix of talent, training and good fortune.
Regarding Godin’s advice to offer content for free, I agree, as long as there’s a mix of paid and free in the writer’s bag. He says he’s offered more than 4000 blog posts for free. Great, I have offered more than 10,000 for free, but he also sells books, and I sell advertising (on AdPulp) and my writing there sometimes leads discerning readers to hire me to write copy for them. In other words, we get paid to write for free.
Thankfully, the buzz around free is starting to fade a bit. I’m actually happy to see so many newspapers begin to charge for their online editions. When you have exclusive content, as many city newspapers do, you can and should charge for it. The rise of eBooks is another game changer, where authors can and should charge a small price for their homemade digital book or booklet.
I do appreciate what Godin is saying, and it is good to approach your craft with humility. At the same time, a pro is a pro, and pros get paid. As do semi-pros, and on occasion, apprentices.
For a Gentile, Scott Carrier knows a lot about Mormons, having lived most of his 50-plus years in Salt Lake City. Carrier’s new book is titled Prisoner of Zion, which interestingly is something he’s perfectly willing (and happy) to be. The place does have a magnetic pull, no question about it.
His book of stories weaves tales of home with tales from Carrier’s adventures in war torn countries on the other side of the world. Both carry weight, but I particularly like his take on Utah and Mormon culture. I also think Carrier’s timing is good, as the closer Mitt Romney gets to the White House, the more people will want to know about the Latter Day Saints.
In “Inside the Momosphere” Carrier describes how when he was eight years old, his LDS friends told him about being baptized in the Mormon temple, and what it meant.
They told me they’d been baptized in the temple and now they were going to a different heaven than I was, unless I converted. They said there are three levels of heaven and they were going to the highest one, the Celestial Kingdom, but the best I could hope for was the second level, the Terrestrial Kingdom, which isn’t a bad place, just not the best place.
To reach the Celestial Kingdom is to become god-like yourself. So, you can see why Mormons have had, and continue to have, an adversarial relationship with people of other faiths. No one wants to be told their version of heaven, which they’re presently making great strides to reach, is second class.
And class is a campaign issue this year. Thanks to the wealth he has amassed, Romney’s life on earth is a bit finer than most Americans will ever know. But it doesn’t stop there, it’s not just about money. Because Romney is by all accounts, “a good Mormon,” he’s also headed for a better afterlife, one where he will achieve godliness, and I have to think that’s a problem, politically speaking.
—
At the end of the book, in a piece called, “Najibullah in America,” Carrier endeavors to describe the American-centric world view held by many Mormon students in his classes at Utah Valley University in Orem. For these students, there simply is no separation between church and state. No need.
Jesus Christ created the United States of America by raising up our founding fathers and guiding their hand in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Once protections for religious freedom were in place, Jesus directed Joseph Smith to found an entirely new religion, restoring the true gospel, and begin building the Kingdom of God on Earth in preparation for His Second Coming.
That’s right, the pilgrims were just laying the groundwork for the intergalactic super show to be orchestrated, like a radio program, from Temple Square. But more importantly, America is for Jesus. Literally. When He comes back, He’s coming back to the America. So, naturally we must protect America at all costs from infidels, and keep funding the military at insane levels, which is a plank in the Romney campaign.
I know a lot of Jack Mormons, people who’ve thrown off the faith. I also know some good Mormons. They’re good people and I don’t want to see the kind of misunderstandings that might occur in this election season around religion. For instance, some conservative Christians, notably Southern Baptists, won’t admit the Mormons into the Christian brotherhood. Yet, Mormons are “busy building the Kingdom of God on Earth in preparation for His Second Coming.”
It may seem unfair to bring a man’s religion in to the campaign, but one’s ideas are often shaped by one’s faith. Therefore, it’s not just fair game, it is an essential part of considering where the person is coming from. Romney was a Mormon missionary in France. He knocked on doors in a Catholic nation that loves wine and sex. He knows what rejection looks like, which is good.
He also believes he’s living a righteous life, but it’s hard to know for sure if he is or isn’t. Just this morning he said he really doesn’t care all that much about the poor. He meant he wants to appeal to the middle class, but it didn’t come out that way. It came out like he’s callous and out of touch. The thing I wonder about is if it’s not all his fault, because a sense of superiority appears to be baked right into his cosmology.
[UPDATE] Reciting verses from The Bible this morning, President Obama responded to Romney’s comments about the poor, without having to call out Romney by name. He’s also clearly saying to Romney’s team and to the nation that he, President Obama, will be the good Christian in this race, thank you very much.
My buddy DK was here in Portland for the holidays. While dining at Zeus Cafe, he suggested that we could collaborate on a novel based on our experiences touring with Grateful Dead in the 1980s and 1990s. I like the idea a lot, and think the addition of a writing partner for this project would be particularly beneficial, as it will require much memory jogging and just as much vivid imagination.
DK, for his part, has his collection of hand-assembled Road Logs available for inspection (no small thing, considering DK and Anina’s house burned down a number of years ago). I too have some primary source materials to help ground the story in place and time. I also have the beginnings of a story written out in decades old drafts. My protagonist, Cody Timberlake of Salt Lake City, is a fan of the band and a pot-dealing ski bum with an East Coast education and beautiful friends.
Where might we take this character and the story now? To make a great novel, we need to adhere to the classic arch of a story and develop the necessary tension (plot twists) that holds it all together, before resolving with either a heartbreaking or heartwarming scene at the end. Naturally, we want to draw on the many real experiences we had during this ten-plus year period. In fact, I’m eager to simply record many of my true stories so they don’t fade into nothingness. Already too many years have passed, and that’s no doubt already changing the way we remember things and how we will present them. However, from a literary perspective, I feel that the distance we now have from these events will help us immensely. DK and I are not Tom Wolfe. We weren’t there as observers. And a composite view pieced together from many accounts, versus us relying on just our personal narratives, will likely present a more accurate picture of the time, the people and events.
For fun (and to prime the pump), I’d like to share one true Grateful Dead story with you now…
Deadheads are notorious for packing hotel rooms to well beyond capacity. After all, eight people in a room–four on the beds and four on the floor–is the more affordable way to travel. Of course, these configurations don’t exactly favor the hotel, and every once in a while we’d run in to some problems with irate staff.
After a show in Oakland one fine night, me and six or so of my friends, walk from the Coliseum to the nearby Hampton Inn where we are staying. At the front door of the hotel we are confronted, as is every guest, with a barricade and two hotel employees charged with the task of letting just two people per room enter the premises. That we had already checked in, paid in advance, moved in to the room itself, had all our gear up there, etc. didn’t mean a thing to these security stiffs.
I say, “Let me get this right, we check in to your fleabag hotel, go out on the town for the night and now we face a martial law situation at the entrance to the hotel?”
“Two people per room,” repeats the stiff.
I whisper to my friends, “let’s go, they’re not stopping us.” I pass the barricade with its insulting sign-in list, and my friends follow my block to the elevator area in the lobby and up we go. No one follows us, we go about our evening like the semi-normal people we are. But this whole thing is under my skin now. I’m pissed now.
In the morning I wake up, take a shower, put on my best outfit and head down to the lobby. “I’d like to speak to the manager.” He comes to the front and asks what he can do for me. I ask if we can speak in private. He escorts me back to his office. I sit down and begin to question him on last night’s theatrics. He says, “You don’t understand these people.” Long pause. “It’s one thing after the next with these people. Did you know they wash their clothes in the hot tub?”
He doesn’t see me as one of them. I don’t say anything, I just shoot scorn daggers at him with my eyes. Now he sees me. Now he says, “Hold it, you’re one of them. Screw you! You are out of here.”
I pull a piece of flattened cardboard from my pocket. The table tent I brought with me from the room says if I am not 100% satisfied with my stay at Hampton Inn my stay is free. I tell the harried manager I am not even 10% satisfied, as I toss the chain’s cardboard promise onto his otherwise orderly desk.
He stands and so do I. We head head back to the public front desk area, where the manager counts out and returns all the cash we had given up for a four night stay.
“Now get out,” he tells me.
“Gladly.”
I go back upstairs and report to my friends on the happenings below. We quickly pack up after our free night and head down to street to the Oakland Airport Hilton, where the staff have all read Conrad Hilton’s book on hospitality, Be My Guest. It’s actually the start of a long and grateful relationship with this particular Hilton property and Hilton in general. On the other hand, I haven’t stayed in a Hampton Inn room since (even though Hilton acquired the chain in 1999).
Are you suffering from Information Age blues? Drowning in data with no time or inclination to sort through it all? You are not alone.
“The issue nowadays is to some extent the need for good filters, pushing away information after centuries of seeking it,” writes Quentin Hardy, Deputy Tech Editor of The New York Times.
Hardy attended a lecture in Berkeley last week by Harvard’s David Weinberger. Weinberger’s new book, Too Big To Know grapples in part with the problem of too much information. Weinberger also believes that “the Web’s ever-changing structure of links undermines hierarchical analysis by allowing everyone to see and contribute different points of view.”
Since Aristotle, there has been at least lip service to the idea of teleology, a process of discovery that leads to greater and greater understanding. We have invested much of our society in making such a process better.
Now, he said, the model of a protean, ever-linked and ever-changing world is killing that. “The dream of the West has been that we will live together in knowledge, that there is One Knowledge. The Web is saying ‘Nice try,'” Mr. Weinberger said. By its very success we know that “the Internet as a medium is far more like the world we live in” and “the Web is closer to the phenomenological truth of our lives,” he said.
Weinberger responded to Hardy’s article with a post of his own. For one, he thinks the headline in the Times piece is misleading.
“I don’t think the Net is ruining everything, and I am (overall) thrilled to see how the Net is transforming knowledge.”
I shared Hardy’s writeup with my friend DK, who is a professor of philosophy. DK wrote back to say the writer “should have mentioned Nietzsche. This article focuses on epistemology–but there are also social issues involved.”
Detailing one such social issue, DK says it is “interesting to note how the students’ writing skills have plummeted in the last several years. They write in sentence fragments with no command of American English–like they’re sending text messages.”
Which goes to this increasingly difficult issue at the heart of the too much information problem: Who has time to think? When the volume of information is pumping at full throttle, and you are gaming on one large screen, while using a desktop, laptop, tablet and/or phone for other tasks, there’s no time to read or write and no time for measured reflection.
DK is right to be concerned about the deterioration of basic communication skills in his students. And I am right to be concerned that I read fewer books that I once did. Why am I reading fewer books? Because the time I once reserved for reading text on paper is now given over to reading, writing and rearranging text on the screen. Plenty of thought and care go in to these acts, but where is the long arching story that requires deep concentration for hours and days on end? Where is the place in our hectic lives for the literary equivalent of the long walk in the woods? The answer is it is all available — the short form eBooks on every topic under the sun and the long form classics.
I think what our media abundance calls for is a greater degree of media literacy and also some personal restraint. It takes a disciplined reader to tackle Heidegger, Joyce, Yeats, Faulkner and the like. The reader must work for the pay off, as instant gratification, to say nothing of the game layer, is nowhere to be found.
