That, of course, is the problem. There is so much unfiltered knowledge and so little time to take in even a fraction of it that we use more cognitive shortcuts than ever before to justify our conclusions. Unlike a time when people got all of their news from the morning paper and Cronkite in the evening, people don't recognize where they are getting their information. Yes, people have more information. The problem is that they are retaining the wrong information. That's why this particular American Forum is important. The new media are sticking around. People must be taught to understand it.
Here is tonight's panel.
- Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason and Freethinkers: A History of Secularism. Maybe I'll ask her and the panel about the new Texas (anti-)science standards.
- Professor Kathryn Montgomery, author of Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet. Hopefully, she'll have a lot to say about childhood development with the internet. My generation is unique. In my elementary and middle school years, the Internet was still extremely primitive -- we were taught cursive writing and were told that it was VERY IMPORTANT -- but all of the kids were introduced to computers fairly early. The generation in high school now? They don't know life without the internet. They've probably never cracked open a hard-bound encyclopedia.
- Andy Carvin, senior strategist for online communities at National Public Radio. He also founded the Digital Divide Network, a community dedicated to bridging the digital divide between those who have access to information resources and those who don't. He blogs at his personal website, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth.
- Josh Hatch, a multimedia producer at USA Today. Glad to see the bona fide media creator perspective represented. This should be a civilized event, but if there's going to be a wedge between panelists, I expect it to be between Hatch and everyone else.
- Our moderator is Dr. Danna Walker, the James B. Simpson Fellow at American University School of Communication. I bet she would want me to link to her Twitter feed.
---
6:20 p.m.: Ward 1 is a much better venue than Mary Graydon Center. I don't see our moderator or any of our guests hanging around.
---
6:33 p.m.: On AIM:
etsk09: @acarvin said he is in the front row waiting
Higuy48: yeah I see him
etsk09: he told me on twitter
This doesn't mean I like you, Twitter.
---
6:38 p.m.: We still haven't started. Omegle is the current king of time-wasters.
---
6:44 p.m.: I have an 8:10 class. This delay is not appreciated.
---
6:46 p.m.: We started at 7 p.m. and ended at 8 last time, didn't we? Okay. I think we'll be fine.
---
7:00 p.m.: And here we go.
---
7:01 p.m.: Walker uses the term "junk thought" in her introduction. I like that. I like that a lot. I'll go so far as to say I love that term. It perfectly describes the process of using actual brainpower on completely useless and stupid endeavors. I'm looking at you, Texas creationists.
---
7:06 p.m.: That was a long intro. Loooooong.
---
7:07 p.m.: Jacoby: "If the media are making us dumber, we are making the media dumber." "By thinking of [the internet] as a god-like source of knowledge..." we forget that it is a tool. "All this is is information. It does not tell us anything about how to look for information." "It doesn't tell us how the information we get fits into a larger body of knowledge."
She makes an analogy to forks. Forks did not make us better eaters. Forks made us faster and cleaner eaters. Susan Jacoby rocks the f-ing house. That cycle in which we feed the media's stupidity and it feeds us back is absolutely real. Just look at FOX. At one point, they were going to run a special called The World's Biggest Bitches. No joke. They cancelled it after the disaster of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?
---
7:08 p.m.: Montgomery: Major institutions are being challenged. Heh. A lot of what she talks about was touched upon in the last American Forum.
---
7:09 p.m.: Carvin: Just as many people are posting stupid videos as are trying to organize campaigns online. Notes that "You can very easily go and cherry pick examples that are absolutely embarrassing," but that you can do the exact opposite as well.
---
7:11 p.m.: Hatch: If they want to use the internet to share cat videos, they can do that. If they want to use it to organize campaigns, they can do that too. "It's an agnostic tool."
---
7:12 p.m.: Jacoby: "There is no such thing as an agnostic tool." OH SNAP.
---
7:13 p.m.: Jacoby: "The Internet is designed to distract you." Now this is something I do not agree with. Technically, she's right. Eventually, you have to log off and do something in the real world with whatever you can set up online. However, it is still saving us tons of time and giving us plenty more time to indulge our curiosity in activities that might or might not eventually prove to have some utility.
She's right that young people tend not to read whole articles. But that's why we have inverted pyramids.
---
7:15 p.m.: Hatch: No, the Internet was designed to share information. It does that very well. Montgomery agrees with Jacoby and Hatch, but more with Jacoby. Watch out for what Jacoby is talking about, she says.
Did I tell you there would be a wedge between Hatch and the rest? Or did I tell you? Yes. I told you.
---
7:18 p.m.: Yes. Jacoby is starting in on junk science.
---
7:19 p.m.: Carvin: I'm impressed by people who can read a newspaper front-to-back, but I'm not up for that. I am going out and looking for things that interest me. "When people are online, they want to find stuff that's of use to them, but also stuff that's enjoyable to them." So they hop around. "Everything is one click away."
And that's why aggregation sites are getting all of the advertising dollars.
---
7:21 p.m.: Jacoby: If you're spending three hours a day watching TV and playing video games, you are not spending three hours a day doing something else (i.e. reading).
Guilty right here.
---
7:23 p.m.: Carvin is talking a bit about the history of "participatory culture" (a.k.a. social media and networking). He cites Wikipedia as a fantastic example.
You know what? I hate Twitter, but if you want to crowdsource, it's the best tool going. I prefer the Wikipedia style, though.
---
7:26 p.m.: Hatch talks about the Candidate Match Game. He says it probably didn't move any votes, but it did get people to take notice of how candidates stood on given issues. A great example of moving information efficiently with all of the necessary context.
Carvin just called Twitter a "fascinating backchannel" that came of age during the campaign. Using it to fact check during a debate, "it was like having hundreds of interns" working for NPR. Hatch gives Carvin and NPR props for this use of Twitter.
Crowdsourcing again. I still hate it.
---
7:30 p.m.: Even Jacoby liked the Twitter debate fact-check project. But she does not like the dependency on the internet and what it is displacing. She does not like the end of face-to-face conversation. I agree. I try hard to talk to most of my friends in person instead of online.
Carvin: "Look, I'm a parent... I have no social life whatsoever. In a good way of course." Goes on to credit the internet with allowing him to maintain and enhance relationships. Notes that young people are not addicted to technology; they are addicted to their friends.
Good for him. I still prefer face-to-face interaction.
Montgomery thinks there is a chance that Jacoby has a point and that people are replacing relationships with online things.
Jacoby: "Friendship is not Twittering with someone once in awhile."
Carvin: "I think there are a lot of people on Twitter who would disagree with you."
Jacoby: "Sure they would. They are on Twitter." BANG! I love this woman.
Carvin talks about a case in which Twitter users created a fund for someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Jacoby asserts that friendship is being there for others.
---
7:36 p.m.: Don't let my dry description fool you. This is a heated conversation. Jacoby and Carvin were really getting into it. Walker just stepped in.
Jacoby. Wow. What a whirlwind. She basically hijacked the forum for almost ten minutes.
Hell yeah.
---
7:37 p.m.: First audience question is about distractions. Which is preferable? Television or Internet? Questioner also compares the Internet to irrigation instead of the fork.
---
7:39 p.m.: Hatch talks about how people use the Internet to supplement their lives. His wife's group uses it as a tool to plan charity and social activities.
Jacoby: The Internet supplements an addiction to TV. She's back to reading, lamenting the fact that people are obsessed with video. She just reminded me of the concept of social capital, a community feeling that is generally accepted to have declined as television came to prominence. She is missing the social power of the Internet. The Internet is restoring social capital.
---
7:43 p.m.: Jacoby gets one final shot in, this time about content. She doesn't care about the content on the Internet. Her problem is with the medium.
---
7:45 p.m.: Second questioner is comparing reading books to reading/using the Internet. Jacoby's response: Reading books teaches you how to read.
Wait... what? I was not born a linguist. I needed to be told what sounds each letter made. Hell, I needed speech therapy until I was two-and-a-half years old. I didn't say a word until then. I think this assertion is wrong.
---
7:49 p.m.: Montgomery wonders whether these tools on the internet are replacing other modes of communication. Jacoby's fears are SPREADING! Muahahahaha!
Seriously, I watch The Sandlot and American Graffiti and lament the fact that we don't run over to people's houses and ask them to come out and play baseball or go race with the new big dog in town.
---
7:51 p.m.: Hatch: The Internet is not replacing friendships. It is replacing no-friendships. We can keep up with friends online much more efficiently and in a more meaningful manner than we can offline.
---
7:52 p.m.: Danna Walker is impressed with Twitterfall.
---
7:53 p.m.: The future question. What's coming in the next five years?
Carvin: The use of location-aware devices. Privacy, personal space will be questioned. Information will be chopped up. Media literacy will be more important than ever. We need to take it seriously in the schools.
I can already sense Jacoby about to explode.
Jacoby: Newspapers are going to be gone in 10 years. There will be a WaPo and a NYT for a very small niche. What will happen to journalism? Those newspapers have always financed investigative reporting.
Susan, you are preaching to the choir. I'm hoping for the endowment model.
Montgomery: Huffington Post has received a major grant to start an investigative journalism operation. Are you listening, NEA?
---
7:56 p.m.: Jacoby: If you go to realage.com, they will sell your answers to pharmaceutical companies. Bonus points for pronouncing it "die-uh-beet-us."
Walker wraps it up. I'm off to my class. I'm so intrigued that I might buy Jacoby's book later.
