Read It and Weep

Today I read two articles that overlapped in interesting ways. One was a Sunday Times front page article about habits of reading, with emphasis on how the younger set reads on the web, and often only on the web, eschewing the actual page turning required when reading bound books, and certainly eschewing the long books and classic novels of the sort I grew up reading. Then I read the cover article in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" I'm a believer in the old-fashioned idea of reading a book, a thing one can hold in a hand or two and turn the pages of. That's not because I'm anti-internet; it's because I believe that the internet provides reams of information, but frighteningly little context. Sure, you can click around like a madman, and write and post your own content (as I'm doing here), but there is some kind of stunning egomania at work in thinking that there's even rough parity between scanning titles and skipping from hyperlink to hyperlink, and reading War and Peace. No, you can't actually capture the nuances of Russian history, and the intrigue and ups and downs in a given set of relationships, by googling War and Peace and scanning a synopsis. It's a bit like thinking that a lick of Tootsie pop is the same thing and as satisfying as sucking on it til you get to its candy center. No comparison.

I don't blame Google for making us stoopid; we were well on our way without it. Google just gave us all a giant shove, as well as ample excuse to pretend that we're now smarter than ever. If that's the case, then why are we no better at solving genocides now (Darfur) than we were in the '70s (Cambodia) or '40s (Holocaust)? Why do we come up with exotic carbon trading schemes, but fail to talk about actual life change, like buying less stuff, having less stuff, and using less stuff, which requires no expertise, just commitment? We've reached a point in historical time when we can see atrocities unfolding on YouTube, but we can't muster the moral courage to stand up and stop them. We see more, and hear more, but are we any more insightful, any more capable of standing up for what is right and challenging what is wrong?

At the same time that Google has exploded, my country has seen its Constitution eroded, individual and collective rights undermined, secrecy in government raised to an art form, and some of the most disastrous international and domestic policies unleashed. What good is a faster computer, packed with ever-more information, and jazzy new ways of viewing it, if we're not smart enough to know which issues should capture our ever-shrinking attention?