Digital Discombobulation: In Search of a Remedy

I spend the majority of my working life browsing the internet in search of reliable information. Really, it's often a mix of tough work and pleasurable work and i've certainly learned a lot in the process. One of the many lessons i've wrestled through in the process of trying to understand the world and working to help others make reliable decisions based upon factual information is that by and large the internet is a web of disappointment. Sure, we've gotten "closer" to one another via virtual connections, and goodness knows data is flowing at practically the speed of light. But, in flesh and blood reality, the world feels further away than ever before.

As a child, the majority of my evenings were spent gallivanting in the woods or concocting schemes with friends. Rarely would you find me plugged to a computer, or any other digital device for that matter. As an early teen, I discovered the wonderful world of Carmen San Diego ala MS DOS and the AIM chat prototype. By the time I hit college, these slight intrigues had crescendoed into a way of life and I found myself sitting up in bed "chatting" away via laptop late at night. Correspondingly, my love of books and the outdoors dwindled fast into a relic of the past. By and large my experience with technology has been at best mediocre. And, while i'm not here to decry the woes of the digital world, I am here to say that for the most part it has left me wanting more.

These days I find it hard to watch movies all the way through, to read books beyond a few pages, to learn and know a subject well in a way that sticks with me for more than a few days. The internet world has groomed people like me to be quick, and speedy, and indecisive. Yes, indecisive, or at the very least hampered from utilizing wisdom and true discernment. The Web 2.0 gurus say "if you can't make a decision, we can help you." In fact, the real revolutionaries claim to even know your preferences better than you do yourself. And that's all well and good, to a point...

But what if that's not what I want? What if what I want is to be a person who is capable of being fully immersed in a subject, a composition, a person, for hours on end without wondering who's tweeting the latest news or whether i've missed the launch of some revolutionary new campaign. What if I want to know one thing well and be able to teach it to others with a sense of mastery and a strong command of the language through which I express my sentiments?

Author, scholar, and technical guru Neil Gershenfeld has written something to the following effect: we haven't expected too much of the internet, we've expected far too little. I'd like to revise his statement just a bit and turn it into something altogether different: What if what we've really expected far too little from is ourselves? In building a world founded primarily upon digital communication, we have fabricated a place in which hiding behind masks and putting on airs is all too easy. It is a place where what appears to be brilliant work may in fact be a re-depiction of a script stolen from the original writers. And with the original writers silenced, no one will ever be the wiser.

Many of today's elites have decided that in order to get ahead, we need to pump ourselves full of knowledge and teach our kids how to innovate. But what if what's really needed in today's economy is the ability to appreciate and cherish the joys of our fellow human beings, to admit the places where we lack and ask others to help where we fall short, to commit ourselves to the good of a particular cause, people or purpose even when it has a shoddy website or is getting little to no air time. What if...?

My point here is simple, but in many ways the subtext reads grey. Sometimes, the right thing isn't glamorous. Sometimes the noble thing feels like you're washing your future down the drain. Sometimes the good thing is of a rare and unfashionable breed (a breed that is simply incapable of being caged or tamed). Many times what we need is not to learn something new, but to unlearn all the lessons that we thought we needed to know in order to make us the kind of people that we thought we needed to become.

For more on this subject, check out this NPR interview with Nicholas Carr, who famously penned the controversial "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" article put out a few years ago.