Since I am leaving CSU, this will be my last post as a blogger for the University. I will keep blogging at this address although in the next few weeks I probably won’t post much, if anything. I will be moving to Eau Claire, Wisconsin for a position at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. For those of you who are regular or semi-regular readers, bookmark me or add me to your RSS reader (see video below for an explanation on RSS).
There has been a lot of hubub recently about the article “Is Google making us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. It was in the most recent issue of The Atlantic. The basic gist of the article is that because we’re reading so much information online, we can’t comprehend lengthy articles anymore and thus it’s making us stupid. I mentioned something similar to this this a week or so ago with my post on newstritional disorder.
In his article, Carr does a good job presenting his argument and also pointing out what he sees would be common criticisms of his thesis:
Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).
The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.
I couldn’t agree more. As someone who grew up in the time at which the internet took off and reading online became a normal activity, I don’t necessarily agree that it’s making us stupid. I don’t have any research to back that up but it just seems to me that we’re going through a change in how we take in information just like with the development of writing and then the printing press. Maybe it’s not the internet that has changed so much as society has changed. How many kids read for fun these days? Is it being encouraged as much as it should by parents and teachers?
Just because we’re not able to read as lengthy of a book or article as we once were, it doesn’t mean that we can’t. It might just take us longer and we might have to retrain our brain to do that. Yes, it’s true, many of us can’t sit for lengthy periods of time reading anymore. Our brains have become used to short snippits and we don’t necessarily “know” as much as we did 50 or 100 years ago. But, as I’m sure many people would suggest, being able to find that information is what we know how to do now. Google has made it easier and being able to sift through that information and make informed decisions should be a top priority of educators. That’s why information literacy is so important to librarians. We realize that times are changing and we’re trying to do something about it.
I’m not saying that there isn’t some truth to the article. But putting the blame on Google is a good attention grabber, but is a red herring in my opinion. Read the article and let me know what you think.
Below you will find the graduation message that Randy Pausch gave at Carnegie Mellon recently.
Many, many people are downloading music on the Internet these days. And, because of that there are some bands like Radiohead and now Nine Inch Nails who are no longer tied to a record label. Because of that, they are releasing their albums on the net, sometimes for free or for a donation based on what someone downloading thinks it is worth. The article that I link to above from the NY Times has a lot of good information in it and some audio files in which Trent Reznor talks about what the Internet has done to the album or why being free of a label is right for him.
What I think is really cool is how Reznor is allowing people to remix his music. He has realized that that is what people are doing these days with products like Garage Band. And, I think that rather than fight copyright infringement cases, he’s getting more people interested in his music because he says to them “Take it. Have fun. Do something interesting with it and don’t feel guilty about it.” That sort of Web 2.0 philosophy on his music will hopefully get more people interested in music, whether that be his or not.
His most recent album “The Slip” was downloaded over 1 million times when it went up online for free.
“Aside from any kind of monetization of it, I’m glad to know that a million people have it on their iPods,” Mr. Reznor said. “If you paid for it, great, but I want everyone to hear it, you know? I want to blow people’s minds.”
It’s easy for someone like him to say this since he’s made his own money before as part of a record company. He’s got his own studio to record in to boot. But, it’s the idea that it’s more about the music and getting people interested in what he’s doing than making money that makes me like what he has to say.
The album before “The Slip,” “Ghosts I-IV,” was released in March 2007,
available in multiple formats, from a bargain downloadable version for $5 to standard CDs and LPs to a luxury $300 limited-edition boxed set of CDs, vinyl, DVDs and artwork. (The 2,500 copies of that set sold out immediately, for a quick gross of $750,000, and now fetch $500 on eBay.)
Not bad for someone without a label. He does say, however that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the idea that music should be free to all. “I don’t agree that it should be free, but it is free, and you can either accept it or you can put your head in the sand.” Although I am not a NIN guy, he’s got the right attitude in my opinion. I hope more people in the music business take what he has to say to heart. It’s like I said the other day about books…If people want a hard copy of the book and can also buy a digital copy, the digital book should cost significantly less than the print edition. So, unless I want a physical copy of the album for my own reasons, then by all means sell an online version for $5 (or for free for a lower quality version as was done and charge for a higher quality version) and one that you can find in the store with its CD case, artwork, etc. for $15-20. People are going to be downloading the songs illegally unless you make it attractive for them to download it legally. It’s not a panacea for that, but it’s something to think about.
For more information on music & the internet, check out First Monday’s special issue on this topic with articles like “Rip, Mix, Burn: The politics of peer to peer and copyright law” and “Giving away music to make money: Independent musicians on the Internet,” or a recent article in the same publication titled “Rearchitecting the music business: Mitigating music piracy by cutting out the record companies.“
As I say above, I think a lot of what he’s saying and doing is applicable to information resources that librarians deal with - especially journals. The promotion of open access journals and materials in the library is a good thing. I’ve written about this before, but the price of these journals and some books have gone up significantly in the last few years. Too bad there isn’t a Napster, Kazaa, etc. for downloading illegal articles. I’m not advocating for such a thing, but what I am saying is that those software programs have caused a shift in the way musicians and music companies think about how they distribute their product. If there were such a problem with illegal downloading of journal articles, maybe then the stranglehold that these publishers have on libraries would lessen and prices would be more reasonable…just a thought.
Do you see the link between these two businesses as I do? What can or should be done regarding music, journals, or just information in general? Should it all be part of the Creative Commons? Should people only publish in open access journals? Should musicians publish online like Reznor and give people free reign over his intellectual property through remixes, mashups, etc.?
For this week’s installment of Friday Levity I’m going to embed a video on social media. Blogs are just one part of social media. Lee Lefevre and his CommonCraft shows are excellent. Check out some of his other videos here. Otherwise, enjoy this one:
