Memory at your fingertips

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

By Matthew Irwin

Mine is among the first graduating classes to use the Internet as a regular and, now, essential part of the job. The integration was disturbingly rapid. I activated my first email account freshman year on a university server that required a gently timed “return” just to log on, and I never knew if an email would arrive at it’s destination.

By senior year, I was on AOL, used Listserv regularly for class and knew what library aisle held the books I needed before I even arrived. Today, I’m considered behind the times because my personal email address reads “@hotmail.com,” but I can access most library databases online. That just leaves the hard stuff, the physical space of the classroom or the library and its books.

A social place during undergrad, the university library became a truly quiet place by the time I entered graduate school, minus the clicking of keys in the ever-expanding computer center.

It’s no secret what I think about media gadgets as applied to privacy, the depth of a face-to-face conversation and the idea of “clocking out” of work, but what about the long-term affect of at-the-tip-of-your-finger information technology.

“The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is.” This is David Dalrymple, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I read this sentence on The New York Times Web site, so obviously I cannot condemn the convenience of the Internet. Nor will I insist that we shouldn’t rely on it (in the event that all technology immediately ceases to function, as in the cult flick Escape from L.A.).

But I will propose that what a person knows, and how deeply, determines his identity, his value. I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard Europeans argue that Americans know a little bit about everything, but very little about anything. I might say the same thing about the Internet.

Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soul Craft who spoke at Teton County Library last week, said that, as a bike mechanic, he relies on a network of subject experts whose knowledge comes from experience only. This is not, of course, to devalue the knowledge in books, but rather to understand the significance of accumulating knowledge over time, for practical application as much as for reference and improvement of the human condition.

As a journalist, I find that the difference between looking for information on the Web and calling a source directly is enormous – the source always knows more than the story, and the reporter is active with the information; he can ask questions. The same holds for individuals building a body of knowledge – ideas and facts don’t stack up for ease of use, but compete, divide and morph like many-colored Playdough into a multi-dimensional picture of the reality of things. This building of knowledge and know-how makes individuals, individuals make communities and communities make nations.

However, if all a person aspires to be is a focused employee, as defined by Dalrymple, or a consumer of information as much as of physical possessions, then by all means he should rely on the Internet; he should be proud of his ability to focus in the face of  social networks and infinite sources. JHW

PERMALINK:
Memory at your fingertips | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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