5 December 2004 - 8:22pm
Failing the new electric c00l-ade acid test
Tom Wolfe has been a writer who has appealed to me over the years, but after seeing him in a smidge of the 3-hour sit-down with Brian Lamb on C-Span this afternoon, I've been wondering how such a smart and curious man could have such blinders about the internet.
Let's first just set aside the silliness he uttered about evolution not being provable (which seems to deny the observable adaptability of bacteria and viruses) and his notions of what college girls want. Let's talk about his thoughts on the internet.
Basically he said the internet is nothing special, just a matter of getting information faster. Maybe it's that he's about to turn 75 and that this is one area where he's a self-admittedly incurious fellow. But it seems to me that he's missing one important and essential thing: the internet is not as much about information as it is about interaction.
People who avidly sneer at blogs (pwasabs) and the blogosphere always rant about how you just get buried in information, and you can't trust any of it because there's so much unreliable information out there. In other words, they complain about too much information.
And it is TMI. Way too much. But they don't even realize what their real complaint truly is.
What's developing now -- really only in the past very few years -- is a new dynamic in how we relate to that information. With trackbacks and watchlists and link lists and referral tracking, we're just adding our first layer of interaction on all this information. On some sites, karma plays into the dynamic, too. All these things are ways of helping to filter out the chaff. The good stuff, once it finds its hook into the higher-traffic sites, tends to rise to attention.
But this is interactivity in its infancy. The fact is we don't even know what interactivity will look like in 10 years, let alone when the little toddlers scrambling around our livingrooms reach college age.
And yet, these pwasabs don't even see that much interactivity. In fact, many don't even grok the concept. To them, interaction is flipping channels with the remote control, or turning pages in a book, or (with a leap of faith) conversation with someone over coffee. So when they are complaining about too much information, what they are really complaining about is too little interactivity -- partly because they don't see what little there is, but largely because that interactivity is still not quite understood, and even feared.
Look at these AOL commercials for "a better internet." A lot of these are Luddite expressions of fear of the future, of uncertainty. Their pitch is to make the internet like television.
I cannot imagine a worse fate for the internet.
Tom Wolfe has been openly soliciting suggestions for the topic of his next book. Being as he prides himself on delving into topics of which he knows virtually nothing, I suggest that his next book is about interactivity and the internet. He just might learn something.
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Cut Tom some slack. He is 74 and does not own a computer.
Plus there is no one in mainstream media who understands interactivity either other than we do it in our pajamas. Or in a bathroom with a modem.
Oh, you're probably right about Wolfe. And you're certainly right about the mainstream media (though I have to point out the exceptions of Bill Moyers and, perhaps, Keith Olbermann).
I suppose I was going off in high spirits more about information vs. interactivity. It's something that the "older generation" (whatever that might be) doesn't really get. I suppose it's like talking to them about the days of radio ... we just don't understand. We all can assume we understand. We can presume to understand. But it doesn't mean we really do.
I don't think I do. I'm still trying to figure it out. Right now, whenever Bill Gates starts talking about smart television and smart houses, I just scratch my head. Talk about not knowing how I might interact with society 10 years from now -- I cannot imagine how Microsoft would fit in, either (although with their lawyers and money, I'm sure they'll figure a way).
If someone does not have a computer, then that individual is hobbled, but it is not a function of age, per se I refer to two posts I made in mediagirl. The first was about "Illiteracy and the Internet" and the second "A View from Partenia," the latter refers to Debora L. Spar and her book, "Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from Buccaneers to Bill Gates."
There is a balance here which Spar brings out in her book. There have been other great inventions - sailing ships that have navigation to go beyond the sight of land, the printing press, the telegraph, the radio, and to some extent television.
Wolf is a pundit and to stay a pundit one must stay current and not argue dotage as a mitigating factor and there are enough of us who hear people almost brag, "I don't know anything about computers" to make us wonder what glory there is in confessing such ignorance; and that has led to a generally held belief that anyone over the age of 14 does not have enough gray matter to operate some rather dumb-ass technology.
The flip side, however, is that anyone under 14 all too often believes (s)he is living at the end of history. Spar, and I think rightly, points out that the printing press, telegraph, and radio had a far greater impact on the world than the Internet has (or will) and many of the same things were predicted would happen. For example, the idea that institutions of higher learning will be obsolete because of radio was widely tauted, at least by some. People would not have to attend classes when they could get the same information over a radio broadcast. A Professor at Tufts quite his teaching post and went on the air to give his learned lectures.
But lectures and information on what foundation?
The issues, to my mind, is literacy beyond the "light of the world" from my flat screen. If people do not have the basic skills, then being connected is an empty exercise.Henry Rosovsky put it well, an educated person ought to have
The new interactive media will facilitate this, but it will not substitute for gaining an ability to think critically and independently. Henry Rosovsky calls these the "Goals of a Liberal Education. " I call them the "Goals of a Yankee Eduction."
They won't be able to hold the technology back that way. There will always be a "for dummies" version like AOL for people who don't want to put that much into it, but the Geeks will continue to demand more.
No one ever succeeds stopping progress. Every generation thinks it's doomed, and that every advance will be the end of the world. (Of course, I'd feel a little better if those people in our culture weren't in charge of the bomb...)
Nuclear energy was supposed to make electricity so cheap that it would be a waste to put a meter on it. The Bicycle was supposed to have been sent by the Devil, as was Elvis and the steam engine.
I'm surrounded by people that don't watch TV or own computers. I'm not entirely convinced that having them would make those people any less irritating, but I wish they'd give it a shot.
As for the interactivity, it is a double edged sword. You can filter out too much. The place I live gets several hundreds of channels. I watch everything - new, old, intellectual stuff like Bill Moyers, goofy stuff like Joey, indie films and classic movies, and lots and lots of what passes as news these days. Others who live here see nothing that doesn't include a basketball, a cowboy or a mandolin. Technology can expand your world or it can screen out anything "objectionable" or "different" and keep you in a cozy little bubble circa 1963.
The more advanced we become, the more I am opposed to home schooling. It's going to be hard to maintain a civilization without some common experience. That's what Tom Wolfe should be writing about.
And he should do it on a MAC.
In .pdf form.
and sell it electronically.
Pulp is so last century...
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."
...except that he should write it on a Linux machine using GNU office software.
Hey, Sweetie-
I know you've been in Mac hell lately, but don't let it drive you to the dark side. Linux has a wonderful, populist aire about it, but it can't touch the elegance of the big cats. Get yourself a Mini Mac and an iPod shuffle and bask in the techno-cool.
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."