Congratulations, classmates. I firmly believe today's class discussion was our strongest yet this semester. I think it seems most people did most of the reading, or briefed themselves in the appropriate topic. Also, everyone seemed to have something to say and no weak points were really let go. This shows how far we've come this semester in the class.
I think the most interesting tension discussed today regarding Nicholas Carr's book is the one between "slowing down" and ignoring distractions. Carr implies that he thinks today's brain make-up is designed for a too quick environment. John's driving example is a great analogy here.
My point comes from the idea that sometimes people are more efficient by going quickly, because it helps eliminating the noise or the distractions. In the scenic driving analogy, if you see a Robin (bird) once, do you really need to focus on the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh... I think you get my point.
I'm playing around with the concept that technology may remove the effort in the early stages of the thinking process. Why waste hours in the library looking for information in books, when you can do a Google search and be offered hundreds of thousands of results (this is not supposed to start another argument about Google, by the way).
The trick is to use the help offered by technology and let it lead to deeper thought in the more elaborate points of one's intellectual process. Because you got to that point quicker, one might have more time and energy to develop more significant ideas.
This reminded me of the Jaron Larnier's argument on noise. I'm going to reread that portion of his book to see if I can elaborate on this idea.
interesting--and I agree about the quality of discussion: really impressive and a clear advance.
ReplyDeleteis efficiency a characteristic of thought?
is it valuable?
why?