Simple-mindedness
Socrates comments on the Internet-mind, thanks to a little creative paraphrasing.
With the Internet, people are still serving their headspace, but what exactly are they being served?
Not all that long ago, Steve Jobs famously suggested that no one reads anymore. Maybe not, but everyone’s blogging as if someone is. What’s going on here? Everybody writes, but nobody reads?
Recently, I tracked comments to an insightful article on demographics. My blood chilled when I discovered several responses along these lines: what I read was interesting, but too long, or I lost interest after the first paragraph.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but this could be a sign of a problem. I wonder if our efforts to simplify prose, cutting down on dependent clauses and paring the sentences to the fewest possible words, is coming back to bite us. For our well-intentioned efforts at simplifying narrative, have we spawned simple-mindedness?
As we endeavor to understand the new narrative venues for the Internet, there are a few questions, someone should ask. Is the transmission of ideas that pass there, truly free? Is the transmission worthy and sustainable? Does it seek to objectify its transmission? Does it promote summary or thesis? Is it worthy of the broad traditions in language and scholarship?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but my instincts tell me we’ve got a few problems.
I’m not suggesting that the whole of human-enlightenment hangs in the balance, but scholarship may be the ultimate victim in this new paradigm. Kicking around the history of language, I found this curious bit from Plato. As we look to transplant ourselves into the new domain of narrative, my revised text here, of the original translation, suggests a context for migration.
… for this Internet of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust search engines and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.