CLAM 6 (not 5)

This week I believe I will take up the issue of “Nietzsche’s typewriter”, or just entire “Google is Making Us Stupid” article in general because, as an avid reader and computer enthusiast myself, I cannot relate to Mr. Carr in the slightest.  While I do skim most articles and sites inspecting for only the facts I need, it is not the same as curling up with a good book and becoming lost for hours on end dragon guarded castles. The difference lies in the mind site and level in which you read the two. When you’re browsing the interwebs, what you find could be interesting, boring, fun, amusing, filled with adorable kittens or just plain stupid. The fact is that we don’t know and so we skim though things to see if the knowledge is useful of interesting and if so, we read on. If not, we move on and the mental anguish is lessened (what doesn’t help is most of the time we are doing research on the internet it is for, example, school work and so we want to get it done as fast as possible so we can return to more fun activities). But there is a mental shift that happens, or should happen, when you change from information download to something actually enjoyable, such as a book, article, short story, or whatever tickles your fancy (note: information download can also be considered interesting reading because, sometimes, learning about something completely new can be just as engrossing as a trip to Neverland!). We stop doing a key word scan and begin to FUCUS on what is being said. There is a different level of commitment to the word and interest quota that needs to be filled in order for it to be worthy of our full attention in this modern world. The key thing in all that I am saying in “INTREST”. I never disagreed with Carr in that we do read differently then we use to but we are in no way losing our reading abilities. If anything, the internet has refined them! We can sort though fluff faster and get to the meat of the material or, if it pleases you, you can slow it down enjoy it. Carr and his War and Peace friend just need to find more interesting material to lose themselves in because, frankly, War and Peace was boring the first time around and why he would want to read it again is beyond me. I guess that is where Carr and I differ, I know what I like and have no problem absorbing myself into the words. He might need to do a little searching because what he is doing, obviously, isn’t working out.

Now to relate all of this to the topic for this blog, Captain Obvious and I had a great little chat over this quaint little story over poor blind Nietzsche and his typewriter today. Of course his writing skillz increased when he switched mediums! It so much of a pain to correct the tiniest mistakes on a type writer over just scratching it out and going on with pen and ink, especially when you can’t see (I know all of this because, despite my lack in moons, I have used a typewritten and I have heard many a horror stories from my mom and her college days when she had to retype entire pages from one mistake and a lack of whiteout). I would not be surprised he didn’t have the next four chapters laid out in detail in his mind (in addition to an outline of the entire work) before composing the first sentence. It saves time, money, and unnecessary labor hours and it bettered his writing. But Nietzsche is right, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts”. Just as how the internet has shifted our reading to scanning, it has also changed our writing, in most cases. We are now exposed to more writing styles which we can emulate or take inspiration from and we can produce it faster thanks to the magic Microsoft Word and its spell checker (one of which I am most grateful! I’m a horrible speller). As a side note I believe the internet has also turned us into bullet point writers but that is another topic for another day and for when I feel like writing more.

As a whole, it is obvious that the internet has changed the way we deal with information, whether its reading or writing, but what Carr and other have to realize it’s a domino effect. You can’t change the way you deal or do one thing without changing or influencing how you do another. As the neurological portion of the article said, our brains are constantly changing and developing, even as adults and so, frankly, Carr should, frankly, stop being a baby and learn to focus and read again. Preferably something appealing to his particular idiom.