"Learning to think in a digital world" is an essay written by Maryanne Wolf for the Boston Globe in 2007. This essay is based on her book "Proust & the squid: The story & Science of the reading brain". Her piont of view tries to be rather scientifical than cultural or historical.
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In this article she expresses her grave concern that the development of knowledge in children who are heavy users of the Internet could produce mere "decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes", and cautioned that the web's "immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge."
4 comments:
Blog Post – Weds 24th
Thanks for the post, this is an interesting read! I'm currently reading Maryanne Wolf's 'Proust and the Squid' at the moment and I feel that the subject of how the human brain learns to read is an extremely relevant topic within graphic design because surely the way that the audience 'reads' a text will effect the design that we (as graphic designers) produce in the future.
I think we should not only focus on google here, but should also look at the effect that new technology is having on design, and the way that design seems to be moving more and more towards digital and interactive design and the effect this will have on our audience. I'm sure the Decode exhibition, currently on at the V&A would provide an interesting example to discuss further.
The Google article seems to imply that the development of technology is bad for our culture, encouraging a passive audience who are unable to think for themselves, but I feel that the Decode exhibition would suggest the opposite. I believe that in this instance, you could argue that the development of new technology is in fact encouraging an 'active' audience, engaging the audience with visually stimulating material that they can interact with in a different way than printed material ever could.
Anyways, here is a link to the book that I came across at the weekend which I think could be useful to our debate:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Googled-End-World-We-Know/dp/0753522667/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267037220&sr=1-1
Just a thought.. on Karen’s post.
I agree that the Google article implies that technology is a bad thing; but I think it refers more to the way the internet affects ordinary’s people’s reading habits, thinking habits, intellectual prowess. How technology is appropriated and used in art, I think, is a different case in point..
The main points in this article augur a very real fear about how the future generation will think..
“The immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge.”
I agree. Access to information does not equal knowledge.
Paul Saffo elaborates in his essay (http://www.saffo.com/essays/aiga.php). In ancient times, writing replaced an oral tradition, thus freeing up the brain-space it took to learn things by memory. Then books replaced writing as the “information storage module”, so man had more time to process information, to think and to create.
With the coming of the digital age, it is only a matter of time, before all the information we need is online. But unfortunately, the sheer deluge of information is also altering how we process it.
I sometimes wonder if, as a generation, we are becoming incurably dependent on the infinite sources of hyperlinks, inspirations, and references online – and in the process losing the ability to think, innovate and create using just our own minds.
For example, it is common for school kids today to simply wiki an answer, change active to passive voice, and pass it off as original “research” for a project. Definitely, that’s not making anyone any smarter.
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