I find it hard to believe that at this point in time articles like Carr's receive so much attention. It seems to be motivated by the same song and dance of fear that has existed since Plato, not Aristotle as the article claims, first railed the writing as being less authentic and true than the spoken word.
The reason for not revealing it to everyone is partially discussed in Phaedrus (276 c) where Plato criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favoring instead the spoken logos: "he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." The same argument is repeated in Plato's Seventh Letter (344 c): "every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing." In the same letter he writes (341 c): "I can certainly declare concerning all these writers who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study ... there does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith." Such secrecy is necessary in order not "to expose them to unseemly and degrading treatment" (344 d).
It seems that these same fears creep into the popular consciousness each time that a particular communication orthodoxy is altered through technology. Damon Darlin nailed the paradigm when he said that these technological tools save us time, but also create myriad new distractions from everything else. Ultimately, all of these entities such as Google and twitter are tools. They are tools that allow us to communicate faster and to larger audiences. I find it hard to legitimize the argument that tools make us "dumb". That statement overly simplifies practical reality. Darlin shows the flaw in that kind of logic in the anecdote about the HP-35. The creative process is not hindered by these tools, it is only accelerated by allowing the mind to focus on creating as opposed to wasting time on mundane details.
Darlin's anecdote about Paul Saffo's idea about two basic types of people: engineers and natural scientists brings up an interesting point. Is there something hardwired in our brains that causes us to fear change? Its seems that certain people are certainly more sensitive to appeals to fear than others.
Darlin points out that technological advancement can have its drawbacks. He jokingly mentions atonal music and molecular gastronomy as such drawbacks. On a more serious note, we must address innovation with skepticism, but without being dogmatic. We must avoid single mindedness. Technology can benefit us, but look at the invention of the atomic bomb. As Ian Malcolm explains in Jurassic Park, we have to ask ourselves if just because we can do something does that mean that we should. The atomic bomb comes to mind a startling example of the Frankenstein paradigm that we should avoid.
However, communication and information tools such as Google and Twitter are certainly not their flaws. They allow those who would seek death, chaos, and destruction the same ability to communicate and access information that those of us who would use them to benefit the world have. Thinking of things in simple black and white terms does little to help one understand our current world. At the end of the day Google and Twitter are making us smarter. They allow us to tap into the collective intelligence of the entire world, and that is perhaps the most powerful tool of all.
Follow the following link to see Carr on the Colbert Report.
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