The Atlantic Cover
Nicholas Carr is a management guru on the forefront of business ideas concerning technology. His most famous piece, “Does IT Matter?” featured in Harvard Business Review, asserted at the height of companies investing in Information Systems technology that IT would move toward commoditization and could not provide competitive advantage.
Carr recently inked “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” Published in The Atlantic, Carr asks if the nature of the Internet – short posts, aggregated info, fast results, immediate gratification - can actually change the way humans think. He worries that his ten years online have rendered him intellectually lazy and incapable of delving into long, complex writing and ideas.
I have recently felt pressure to shorten blog posts because people don’t have the patience to read through all the content. You can see in my marketing blog how I tried to put a few quick thoughts in short posts, especially concerning Steve Ballmer’s failed Microsoft bid for Yahoo!. However, because I was trying to limit the quantity, I only covered a small facet of the story and that facet has been rendered irrelevant by the developments of the last month. I always felt that, if I am going to write at all, I should really dig in and examine all sides of a story, as I think I did concerning MySpace vs. Facebook. I am old school and, although I am blogging now, I don’t think I have been corrupted yet. In grad school, I got my news from the daily New York Times – the hard copy. I read most of the articles in the World and Business sections. I read books also. But since starting my new job, most of what I read is online. I may develop the habits Carr mentions. And I feel the pressure to keep this post short. I may be joining the trend after all. Goodbye now…
1 response so far ↓
Tatyana // October 8, 2008 at 3:57 am |
I agree with you, in fact I think that with the increasing pace of our lives, globalization and growth of technology we are not only researching less, taking in the fist search and becoming nomads in a sense, but are also ironically becoming more disconnected from each other and the world. Though it is so easy to make a phone call, write an sms or an e-mail, people are in fact spending much less time actually socializing and thus engaging in our worlds. Realities.
It seems that today i can open up the NY times or the Economist or any of the news on the web sites and be completely overwhelmed with the amount of information. Economy is collapsing, war is continuing, people are dying, earthquakes are shaking, hurricanes are coming, governments are corrupt and there are terrorists around every corner…it can all be a little overwhelming at times, and instead of asking “what can I do to help?” i feel like i often am much more likely to say “fuck it! we are going to hell in a hand basket, and i just hope i am around for the end of the world”.
Maybe this is naive of me, but it seems that in the past, when the reach of media was not as broad it was easier for us to concentrate on and actually tackle issues. Issues in our own back yard. And that people used to participate in life a little more and not just exist their way through it, only consistently satisfying a requirement of being a good consumer whore, not a good citizen of the world.
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