Tuesday 29 June 2010

Canaries in the coal mine?

A question: are the internet naysayers* right?

A more useful question: what can be learned from their criticisms?

Last month, I wondered about the internet's strengths also being its weaknesses, and what could be achieved by addressing these weaknesses, rather than always playing to its strengths. I didn't realise at the time that the post, in places, was also touching on issues highlighted in Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, namely: how much we actually absorb of what we read online; and the feeling that the internet doesn't encourage a reader to stop and reflect (there's always another link, widget, text, etc. beckoning us on).

Regarding The Shallows, I'm more in the Clay Shirky / Steven Johnson camp - i.e. on balance, the benefits of the internet significantly outweigh the drawbacks - but there does seem to be a lot of this going about at the moment; Carr is far from the only one waxing gloomy about what the internet might be doing to us. To name just the first two that spring to mind:

Andrew Keen has decried "the cult of the amateur" - the internet's user-generated assault on professionalism and factual authority. And Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto seeks to re-emphasise individual creativity, expertise, and the human above machines and the crowd.

I come from a philosophy background. What many philosophers will tell you is that philosophy isn't so much about answering life's big questions as framing those questions in a useful and productive way. What interests me in all the current internet naysaying, then, is precisely the questions: these are the crucial parts of the arguments. Whether we want to call the conclusions of Carr, Keen et al overly-pessimistic, or indeed wrong, or question certain of their interpretations of scientific evidence, still their original questions tend to persist - so if not their answers, then which?

Take a recent article in Prospect Magazine. Evgeny Morozov, in his critique of The Shallows, largely upholds the questions Carr raises - indeed he adds a number of his own that he believes even more pressing, regarding the wider societal effects being exerted by social networking - but instead argues that the internet will self-correct many of its shallowing tendencies. Companies, he says, will increasingly offer products and services to help those who want to counterbalance the shallowing effect, individuals will seek to positively alter their habits. Already, for example, there's Instapaper to make online reading distraction-free.

Rather than dismiss Carr's questions, Morozov simply takes a different approach, brings a different perspective to bear on them, leading to - for the most part - more encouraging results.

Our challenge, then, if we disagree with Carr's gloomier conclusions - or for that matter Morozov's re. social networking - is to create the conditions and constructs that will prevent those conclusions from becoming correct. To take his questions and answer them positively, rather than simply dismiss them. To evaluate how well he has asked his questions, and address them another way.

In short, however optimistic we are about the internet, we shouldn't dismiss the naysayers - even those with whom we disagree. We need them. Whatever else they might have to say, it may not be the questions they ask that are wrong.


*Or in some cases 'hmm'-sayers.

Saturday 26 June 2010

The Weekly Links Post: No. 14

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below (I was having a bit of an internet detox last week):

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

The iPhone 4: great, as long as you hold it correctly.

Twitter's latest teething troubles.

Five of the best alternatives to Spotify.

The Top 10 comedy podcasts.

Is Newspass Google's answer to paywalls?

Social Media

Losing our minds to the web? The issues raised by Nicholas Carr's The Shallows will likely be solved by the web itself, says Evgeny Morozov. The real danger lies in how "the transparent culture of social networking is slowly reshaping human behaviour."

Clay Shirky's response to The Shallows.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

GalleyCat is compiling a directory of the best online fiction writers.

Library users - in London, Ontario - can now borrow e-books.

SlushPile Hell: a "grumpy literary agent" selects choice excerpts from authors' query letters - for example:

"My 318,000 word novel may seem like it starts a little slow, but after the first 100 pages or so it really picks up steam."

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Lifehacker explains how to silence the vuvuzelas (Clarice...).

Music

EMI is no longer a record label, now it's a "comprehensive rights management company". Which is nice.

Playdio: listen to and broadcast radio shows on Spotify.

Games & Other Distractions

Crush The Castle 2: destroy castles, with a trebuchet. Again. This time with added electric eels.

Miscellaneous

"Sanatogen Tonic Wine: because kids are murder!" - just one of many old magazine adverts posted and commented on by the Gypsy Creams blog.

Saturday 12 June 2010

The Weekly Links Post: No. 13

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

Google's front page gets a background image - for less than 24 hours.

Could Safari's new ad-blocking feature, paradoxically, help the media?

Free movie streaming trial launched in UK to help combat piracy. (Trial ends on 13th June.)

Was Iran's 'Twitter revolution' exaggerated?

Why publishers are abandoning the web, in favour of the app.

Social Media

Yahoo and Facebook announce agreement
to tie their services closer together.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

KCRW's archive of the Bookworm radio show: listen to and download some of the best author interviews you'll hear.

This month's The Believer magazine has an interview with the show's host, Michael Silverblatt.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Wi-Fi Stumbler: discover the most interference-free channel for your wi-fi router.

A new minimalist way to read The Guardian online: just keep turning the page. (More info from its creator here.)

Music

A symphony in a jewel case, but without the CD: 1-Bit Symphony.

Thom Yorke's prognosis for the UK music industry: will fold in a matter of months.

Games & Other Distractions

Can you stabilize the US debt?

Miscellaneous

Microsoft update adds an extension to Firefox without asking.

Adobe fixes critical Flash security flaw.

Saturday 5 June 2010

The Weekly Links Post: No. 12

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

David Cameron calls for government departments to open up their datasets; the Treasury opens up its spending database (Coins) for the first time.

Generation Y is just a marketing concept: why generational labels are meaningless.

When crowdsourcing works.

If Google is a parasite on news sites, what about Facebook?

Some alternative ideas for monetising online print media. (Follow up to a previous article, Newspapers: the future.)

Social Media

RIP Digg. Cause of death: "social fatigue".

A Top 10 of infographics about social media.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

The Faster Times: "a new type of newspaper for a new type of world"; an experiment in professional, collective online journalism.

The Paris Review has launched a new daily blog.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

DuckDuckGo: a search engine for those who favour the keyboard over the mouse. (Not sure what ducks have to do with it.)

The biggest online security risk? Installing Flash, says hacking contest winner.

Music

Better Pop Music: a free compilation album, featuring 19 tracks from blog-friendly acts like Caribou, Air France, Memory Tapes and The Silent League; courtesy of NME and London's Something In Construction record label.

Games & Other Distractions

Mamono Sweeper
: Minesweeper crossed with a basic RPG - think hit points, experience points, and monsters instead of mines.

Miscellaneous

The 1000 most visited sites worldwide, according to DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Time travelling: Museum of London's new augmented reality iPhone app combines a walk around London with a Look Into The Past.