posted by Nate
Last week, John Dvorak, columnist for PC Magazine, wrote an article for Fox News titled The Internet is Making Us Dumber, in which he lamented the decline of major newspapers, magazines, and TV news. He believes that by turning away from the traditional mass media outlets, we have lost an important perspective, which he describes as “generalized or common knowledge.” In other words, because we can select from a much wider range of outlets for information on the Internet, we’re no longer on the same page when we meet at the watercooler to discuss current events.
Here’s one of the more entertaining nuggets from the piece, where he describes the current state of the public as it spends more time consuming news on the web:
Meanwhile, the public continues to read about what they already know. And they hang out only with like-minded people. There are huge cadres of people who are practically duplicates of each other. They all think alike, dress alike, and go to the same group-approved places. With the slow death of newspapers, this beehive-like behavior is only going to get worse.”
Let me get this straight: with the ability to choose where and how we get our news via the Internet, we’re becoming clones, and only when we return the days of a handful of newspapers and TV news outlets will we recapture a “worldly” perspective? I fail to see how limiting our access to choice helps to avoid conformity and groupthink.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Dvorak has been ridiculously off-base, such as the time he predicted the iphone would be passé within three months of its release. It’s just strange to hear this from a tech journalist who is obviously no luddite. Who knows, perhaps he’s simply found a niche as the contrarian old codger. But then again, maybe I’m missing something here. Have we lost something special by moving away from the collective conversations we once had with only three major news anchors and the one major local paper? Were we really smarter then?
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I first started reading Dvorak’s material in PC or one of the other paper magazines that came to my home way back when. Most of those are no longer published. Maybe all, since I haven’t read one in years. Yet Dvorak continues to publish on the very medium he decries. He’s a classic troll, someone who has learned well how to write to the medium in ways to attract the most attention and thus traffic. As much as I disagree with his material, I can’t help but admire him in some ways since he’s still thriving. A bizarre paradox in an era I have for many years called The Golden Age for communicators. If you can write, manipulate images and/or audio there is a place for you. Even if you are an old curmudgeon.
There is a similar cover article in this month’s Atlantic magazine titled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid”. The focus of the article is on how people “physically” read today vs reading behaviors of the past. The fantastic part of the article is that it looks back at previous monumental leaps in communications like the written word and the printing press and how they were to be the death of “intelligent” society. We all know how those turned out. This is just another giant leap that will be looked upon by history as something that moved society forward immeasureably.