Is the Internet Shortening attention spans and undermining long term cultural memory??

After the American Century

I have been silent for longer than at any other time since this blog began in 2007. I might blame this on any number of events. But my silence has much to do with increasing doubts about the overall effects of the Internet on our lives. The increasing commercialization and the wholesale acquisition and resale of knowledge about everyone using the Internet are disturbing.

It is not just the NSA that invades our privacy. So do many others. Some do so openly.  My opinions, friends, likes and dislikes, and much else is gathered by Facebook. Credit card companies gather data about the purchases of their cardholders. Google has built up an enormous mine of data for resale. As one analyst put it, Internet users have become the product that Internet companies sell.

Many others invade our privacy illegally, prying their way into on-line identities, extracting money from digital bank accounts, or assuming false identities and telling us lies in the hopes that we will give them a pin code or a social security number. Cyber criminality is big business, and the ordinary individual does not have many weapons to fight back.

Once, enormous corporate advertising budgets went to magazines and newspapers, and in exchange one had a vibrant news media. This is all changing today, and it is not yet clear to me that the Internet is an improvement. Yes, everyone can publish, including myself. But there are so many voices competing for attention that only a tiny fraction get an audience. The older media often seem to be dominating the Internet, in any case, and, more and more, they are charging for their services. Is the overall result positive? It is too soon to be certain.

A similar pattern is evident in book publishing. There are far more authors than ever before, but most titles are now self-published. Bookstores are dying. Academic publishers are struggling. The reading audience does not seem to be growing as fast as the population. Moreover, the newspapers seem to review fewer books, and they seldom take note of academic titles, compared to the situation 20 years ago.

For about a decade the answer to these worries seemed to be that e-publishing would expand the market. But in 2013 sales of e-books in fiction fell just slightly, the first time this had ever happened. Overall, e-book sales have flattened out after rising quite rapidly in the first years. At present, the e-book is eating into sales of hard copy books, but the overall sales are not increasing. Predictions seem to be that e-books will surpass printed volumes in the very near future, but the market as a whole is not necessarily growing. 

Moreover, the number of books actually being read is probably falling, if my own experience is any measure. I have purchased many inexpensive e-books and downloaded quite a few free ones, but I have read very few of them. I got them because they were free and made it possible to search a large corpus quickly. This is admittedly an advantage. But when I buy the complete works of Mark Twain for a few dollars, in order to search them easily for certain materials, such a multivolume purchase falsely suggests a larger reading public than is actually is out there.

The kind of public that surfs the Internet constantly is not thinking long and hard, it seems. The attention span dwindles. Like students who browse the Web during classes (which they have seldom prepared for, in any case), the Internet seems to support banter and jokes on Twitter more than thoughtful, long analysis.

In short, the pluses may be gradually outweighed by the minuses of the Internet. This is particularly clear in Denmark, where the government has decreed that all communication between the state and the citizen must be conducted digitally. More, they have created systems that only work with new computers, so that anyone, like myself, who has a 32-bit computer literally cannot log in. I know a number of older people who do not even know how to use email, and they will effectively be cut off. I intend to make a personal and a written protest, along with a request to be allowed a tax deduction for purchasing an other wise unnecessary new computer. 

In a similar move, the Danish state schools are beginning to demand that all parents supply their children with a laptop or an Ipad for use in school every day. Imposing this expense while saving money on textbooks is wrong. Asking children under 10 to carry around a valuable computer is an invitation to thieves and bullies. Expecting teachers to solve the software problems that will ensue because children have different systems and machines is an idiotic waste of their time. Assuming that technology makes education better without public discussion is dubious.  I could write a column about this issue alone.

But to keep to the larger perspective. The new reality is that banks, government, schools, and employers now demand that everyone has a new or recent computer. It is fast becoming impossible to pay taxes, seek a job, pay a bill, or keep track of expenses without mastery and continual updating of multiple accounts, including continually changing passwords.

Worst of all, I suspect that in the long term this vast digital system is going to suffer memory losses. On a personal level, I cannot now access the things I wrote and in many cases published in the 1990s. The software and the hardware has changed too much. Does anyone really believe that if a tax or financial or legal issue arises that requires older records, that these will really be available? The jury is necessarily unable to decide this issue, and we will just have to wait several decades to find out.

Last year I was in a small courthouse in Iowa, and wanted to see some records from 1894. They were handwritten, easily retrieved, and perfectly legible. Will the same thing be true of our digital records 120 years from now? I doubt it. 

Is the Internet shortening attention spans in the short term, and undermining long term cultural memory? Is the state beginning to abuse the Internet and demand "participation" in digital systems simply to save money and to distance itself from actual contact with citizens? Are state institutions, such as schools, substituting technology for books and other physical resources, and transferring the cost to citizens? In the name of efficiency and convenience, we seem to be entering a digital prison, with short-term advantages but long-term costs, not the least of which is collective memory loss.

Technology Matters: Internet book piracy - author's view

After the American Century

The thing about being robbed in cyberspace is that you don't even notice. Last year when someone got hold of the number on one of my credit cards  and began spending thousands of my dollars in Florida, I felt and heard nothing for weeks. If someone had robbed me on the street, I certainly would have noticed. But I have not been on the streets of Florida for decades. 

This week I discovered that many different people have been stealing, almost certainly for several years, my book Technology Matters by downloading it for free from the Internet. I stumbled across one site giving it away, notified the publisher, and it was taken off. But then I decided actually to search and see if there were others. I found out that there were at least 8 other sites where the book could also be downloaded for free.

But was this really free? The  book can be purchased on Amazon for $10.06 brand new. It is also for sale as a Kindle edition for about the same price. So this is not at all an expensive book. My publisher has made a great effort to make it available at a reasonable cost. Were someone to download it for free and print out the 296 pages, how much would they save? Assuming two pages on a sheet, these pirates need to print 148 pages, plus the cover. Then it would be wise to bind the whole thing together in some way. And do not forget the cost of the ink and electricity and the wear and tear on the printer. There may be a small savings, but the result is not nearly as nice, as lightweight, or as handy to use as a bound book.

Aside from the economics of this theft, there is the effect on publishing. The more people download illegally, the fewer books the publishers sell, and in fact the fewer books they can afford to publish. The sort of person who wants to read Technology Matters is someone who would like publishers to survive and to bring out a wide variety of academic titles.

Instead of supporting the authors, the publishing industry, and the culture of learning, the Internet downloading pirate is choosing to spend money on printers, ink, electricity, and paper.

Alternately, the thief can read the book in electronic form, but it was not formatted for that medium, and based on my own experience of reading PDF files on both an Ipad and Kindle, this is an awkward business. Try jumping to the index to check something and finding your way back, for example. Try to go look at the footnotes (usually at the end) out of curiosity. Not easy.

Finally, as an author who spent three years researching and writing a book that people are stealing from me, I must point out that royalties are never large enough to cover the costs of going to the archives and libraries, much less provide a plausible hourly wage. As a rational economic man, if sales fall because my work is stolen digitally, I should stop writing books altogether. There is no economic incentive. Internet book piracy can only discourage writers from writing and publishers from publishing.

Stealing books electronically may seem like getting something for nothing. But it takes from some and gives to others. Seen in a larger perspective, there is no free lunch. If this trend accelerates, we will eventually have no more books, but instead printers, copy machines, and blank paper that no one wants to write on,

Fluidity in the "YouTube Campaign"

More than any presidential race that I can recall, this one reveals voters who are uncertain about whom they will ultimately support. Look at any of the more detailed polls, and you find that half or more of any candidate's support is "soft." So many people have not really made their minds yet, that relatively small events may have a big impact on the final result. Hillary's tearing up is only one example of what we can expect will be a series of signature moments when the electorate gets a new perception of a candidate. One such moment, showed an older woman ask McCain, "How do we stop the bitch?" She can only be referring to Clinton, and the entire (Republican) room erupts into laughter, McCain included. He never directly answers the question, but his facial expression reveals some sympathy for the query combined with the realization that he had best treat the incident as humorously as possible. But the question and the crowd response speak volumes about the Republicans.

Another moment, concerning Romney, also was caught on camera and made available on YouTube. In this short sequence, Romney approaches a young man in a wheelchair. No doubt the candidate is expecting to score some points by displaying compassion. But the encounter goes badly for Romney. As the camera rolls, he learns that the young man suffers from an incurable condition, and that the only thing that can ease his pain is marijuana. Romney is against drugs of all forms being legalized under any circumstances, and immediately points out that there is a synthetic form of marijuana available as a pill. This he supports, if prescribed by a physician. But the young man says that the such pills make him ill, and that only smoking marijuana works for him. Romney begins to back away, as the young man asks whether, if elected, Romney would put him in jail for smoking it. Romney does not hesitate to say that he does not endorse such use, turns his back on the man and begins to look for a more congenial conversation. But whoever is holding the camera stops him, and asks if he is literally going to turn his back on the young man. Will he not speak with him? Romney curtly replies that he has already spoken to him and given him an answer.

The whole episode takes less time to see than it does to describe. It makes me dislike Romney who appears slick, self-assured, insensitive, rigid, cold, and "deeply superficial" - by which I mean superficial all the way down, through and through. Now conceivably this was not a characteristic moment. Maybe Romney normally is a really nice guy. But the footage seemed to me a confirmation of what I have sensed about the man all along.

Such YouTube coverage may become a crucial element in this campaign, helping the public to get beyond the spin and the crafted TV commercials. I certainly hope so. But we will also have to be wary of assuming that YouTube videos are themselves completely unvarnished slices of reality. They can be manipulated and edited, too.

The important point is that in 2008 we are experiencing the conjunction of two events that might not have coincided. The first is the wide open race on both sides, with no heir apparent in either party. This basically has not happened in the memory of the electorate. The second is the advent of YouTube, which is so new that it did not play a role in any previous campaign. As we move through the rest of the primaries, look for more of these moments digitally captured and rebroadcast via the Internet. We seem to be witnessing the birth of a major force in the electoral process. Just as radio became important in the 1930s and television in the 1950s, reshaping the political landscape in the process, the Internet may provide a new kind of electoral battleground. In this new form of public space, the ordinary person has more opportunities to be heard, via Blogs and digital imagery. This makes possible new forms of negative advertising, and new kinds of "reality TV" straight from the campaign trail.

Perhaps that is why Barack Obama has visited the Google headquarters at least twice. He can see that the politics of the future will be more interactive and less from the top down. During his second visit Obama gave a rousing address to a standing-room-only crowd, in which he showed himself quite savvy on the issues that concerned such entrepreneurs. Obama's appearance at Google, too, is available on YouTube - which Google owns.

Obama also has a sophisticated on-line fund-raising operation, which has gathered thousands of email addresses from supporters and provided him with infusions of new cash. His homepage is not only well-designed, it generates campaign money for up-coming contests. Obama makes it easy for contributors to match gifts, to provide the names and emails of other likely contributors, and to follow the progress of each mini-fund drive. And contributors have opportunities to chat on-line to one another, too.

Overall, both Obama and Clinton appear more computer literate than either McCain or Huckabee. That ought to position them well to operate in the new world of Internet campaigns, with its unscripted (or semi-scripted) moments on YouTube. This may be crucial in reaching the still undecided electorate. Stay tuned.