Nick Carr writes of Doris Lessing's Nobel acceptance speech where she stated:
What has happened to us is an amazing invention - computers and the internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" In the same way, we never thought to ask, "How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging et cetera?"
Very recently, anyone even mildly educated would respect learning, education and our great store of literature. Of course we all know that when this happy state was with us, people would pretend to read, would pretend respect for learning. But it is on record that working men and women longed for books, evidenced by the founding of working-men's libraries, institutes, and the colleges of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reading, books, used to be part of a general education. Older people, talking to young ones, must understand just how much of an education reading was, because the young ones know so much less.
We all know this sad story. But we do not know the end of it.
Writing about Lessing's speech here is somewhat tantamount to agreeing that, yes, I have stopped beating my husband. I am 'wasting' my time writing to this weblog in response to Lessing's speech, which I first heard about in a weblog, which means, ipso facto, I am reading a weblog and therefore wasting my day away. I can escape the first syllogism by stating, "I have no husband"; the second by asking, how do we determine what is 'worth' and what is 'waste' when it comes to what we read, and how we spend our time? More importantly, who makes this determination?
The internet is no more culpable for people 'wasting' time away than the television was, and the radio before that, and the electric light before that–on back through history marked by one invention or another. Technology does not change culture, as much as technology and culture impact, equally, on each other. As scientists, inventors, and historians have long known and remarked: the time is always ripe for the invention. In other words, the culture drives the invention, which drives the culture, which drives the invention and so on.
It is said that the industrial revolution was based on the invention of the steam engine, but the concept of the steam engine had been around for more than a century before James Watt increased its efficiency, making it viable for industry other than mining. Did his invention change the culture, or was his invention a reflection of a culture, which celebrated both the mechanical and efficient–leading to factories which were the bane of the poor as we left one century for another.
The steam engine did not lead to cruelty; to the abuse of children and adults, alike. It was the culture of the time, which celebrated those who would pull themselves up by their boot straps and didn't see the harm in working people almost to death. After all, there was nothing holding anyone back from becoming a Vanderbilt, Getty, or Gould. Nothing, of course, but no time in which to dream when one is working 16 hour days. Gas lights made working into the night possible, but did not create the mentality that working people long hours was acceptable.
Fast forward in time and we've become a world based on consumption, all because of the invention of the television. However, TV did not drive the culture, but was itself, a victim of the culture. Television got its start following a war when the world had existed in fear and people had suffered depredations, both big and small. Consumerism would have become rampant whether there was television to spread the word, or not. My god, it was our duty to buy in those times. Buying fueled the industry, which created jobs, which generated more buying. What we didn't know, then, is that we were rapidly depleting our natural resources in this orgy of build-buy-build-buy. Yet, ironically enough, it was on television where I first learned of this thing called "environmentalism".
Now it is a new era and new inventions, chief among them the internet and the web, and seemingly from Ms. Lessing's comments, weblogs. All three are being blamed for everything from the lack of interest in education, to the lack of respect for the written word. Yet Amazon has grown fat on the profits of selling that which we supposedly disdain: books. Entire web sites spend most or all of their space providing reviews of, what else, books. The Gutenberg Project actually makes books available online for free.
Ms. Lessing mistakes our assumptions of easy access of books for indifference to books. A very romantic thought, but not a very logical one. Because we don't walk twenty miles through the searing heat to get such books, does not mean we value them less. One should not equate the act of obtaining an item with how much we value that item. Attempt to deny us our books and you will quickly see how fiercely we would fight. I dare say that even the people of Zimbabwe would blink in astonishment at our ferocity.
As for the banalities of this space, among the items I've read this week were those having to do with biofuel generation and the complexities associated with the industry; a story on World War II; articles on local, national, and international topics; several bills pending in Congress, some of key importance to me; of a fight between two families that unfortunately caught a world's eyes. I watched, with some relief, Olbermann's special comment on Bush and Iran; relieved because he has the nation's ear where I don't, but said everything I would have said and more.
I've picked up three new books for my 'must check out' list, not to mention thinking how I could reduce my meat and corn fructose intake. I learned new things–about web graphics, semantics, and other topics dear to my profession, but probably commonplace and seemingly uninteresting to others.
I read several people's writings about their lives and and the lives of others, and though they will never win Nobel prizes for their writing, they do manage to use words in a coherent manner–and entertain, enlighten, inform, anger, sadden, and uplift. Isn't that what all works of writing are supposed to do?
I also started reading Nick Carr's new book, and Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. I would be curious to know at what point in all of this reading is the moment where I stepped over the line from spending time in banal pursuits, to spending time usefully? What makes one piece of writing more important and therefore more worthy than another?
update
Apologies for misspelling Doris Lessing's name originally. I am more used to writing on Larry Lessig's work, and my spelling was on auto pilot.
