Sunday, August 30, 2009

Conversation by Factoid


Much has been written about the way that reading is quickly changing in the internet age. Consider, for example, a fairly standard internet news story: it consists of a paragraph or two of information, with a large, glossy picture. There may be further text stashed away somewhere, but you have to click on a link to find it. Meanwhile, the key points have been summarized for you with bullets. Related stories are linked somewhere in the margin. At the bottom of the screen, perhaps, are unrelated but highly popular stories, usually involving celebrities, nakedness or both. And then there are the omnipresent advertisements. (I would have included a screen shot of such a thing, but you've all probably seen it before; and if you haven't, the Guild Review more or less reproduces the phenomenon, though without the ads or naked celebrities, and somewhat more text.)

Critics point out that this format is changing the way that we read, shortening our attention spans and making it harder for us to follow narratives, arguments or anything more than a paragraph in length. Moreover, it seems the phenomenon is spilling over into spoken conversation as well. Rather than telling stories or laying out a line of reasoning, conversations often consist of factoids, one-line arguments and the briefest of anecdotes. Frequently these come from television programs such as The Daily Show or Mythbusters. All things considered, both programs are fairly intelligent, but the snippets that get cited the following day are frequently the witty lines or the (literally) explosive conclusions, rather than the thoughtful discussions that went with them. Perhaps the most grating form of this phenomenon is conversation which consists wholly of movie quotations. While a certain amount of intellectual power is required to memorize and string together such quotes, the heights which can be reached by such discourse are fairly low and no given topic can hold the collective attention for terribly long. In all of these cases, the result is an intellectually choppy outcome, incapable of moving from A to B to C and on to D, either narratively or philosophically.

Short intellectual attention spans manifest themselves in other ways as well. Even the intelligent and well-educated can be woefully incapable of discussing such things as literature. Interesting comments may be given, but they focus on poignant moments or arresting characters, things which are often emotional and subjective and are usually perceived in a single instant. Much more rare are considerations of an author's world-view or his opinion of virtue. Such rational arguments require the review of multiple episodes within the work, the discovery of common elements between them, and the refutation of episodes which would seem to undermine the argument at hand. Such discussions are by no means impossible today, but much more difficult for those who cannot hold their nose to the grindstone of a single topic for more than a passing moment.

In addition to frustrating college professors, does this phenomenon really have significant consequences? Who cares if our conversations are becoming shorter and choppier? Does it really matter? In point of fact, it does. Financial investing, political decisions and life-long vocations all require more than a moment's consideration. But perhaps most importantly, our ability to consider the Highest Things, the First Principles of the cosmos, is seriously compromised if we cannot think outside a jumble of factoids. Christ' words to Martha seem particularly apt: "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary..."

4 comments:

Caitlin said...

I agree with you. The question then becomes, how do you communicate with the masses? It certainly poses a dilemma in my profession. On the one hand, you don't want to miss any intricacies of the truth, but the other hand you want people to actually read what you are writing. Best practices for the web are now that you would never write long paragraphs (in fact, your blog would be much too long). What we are trying to accomplish right now is using short, digestable pieces of information, on social networks and the like, in order to draw people to more hefty information. However, even in those short pieces of information, we try to 'translate' a complete message and put it in terms people understand.

Stephen said...

Don't join the legal profession then. One of the constant refrains of my first year legal writing classes was, "Keep it short and very well organized (almost in bullet points), because the judge has too many other briefs to read and research."

I think my own shortening attention span derives at least in part from my legal studies. I'm always looking for the main point of an argument, the one paragraph that holds the whole opinion together, so that I can finish taking notes.

One of the ways I combat this danger is by reading literature on the train going to class. I don't have to look for an argument; I can just immerse myself. 19th-century novels with detailed plots that you have to pay attention to do nicely for this purpose. Jane Austen is a good example of such an author. Dickens, on the other hand, is just overkill.

Aaron Linderman said...

It's true, this post was far too long by modern standards; but check out the one below it: limited text, video(!) and plenty of links within the story, beneath it, in the margin, etc.

I think your strategy of starting with small bits and drawing people into something larger makes sense. As a teacher, or at least an aspiring one, one of my objectives should always be to continue throughout a semester to stretch my students' intellectual attention spans through longer and more complex arguments, starting relatively simple and moving from there. While the state of things can be depressing, it's also rather impressive how much students really can grow in a single semester.

Aaron Linderman said...

Related to this problem of intellect is a problem of the will: lots of people have great difficulty making commitments.

The phenomenon of channel surfing - which one might easily guess drives me up the wall - touches on both issues. Channel surfing demonstrates the disinterest many people, including many intelligent people, have in choosing a given topic or story and following it through from beginning to end.

Channel surfing brings to new heights - or rather, new depths - the passivity of television, by no longer even requiring the viewer to choose a given program.

If we cannot be inconvenienced to follow the same characters for a whole 30 minutes, can we really expect to master the difficult questions of life?

If this sounds like over-reacting to a fairly mild practice that is, for many, simply a form of decompression and relaxation, I'd be inclined to agree, except that the same lack of commitment can be seen all over our society. Three examples of far greater import come to mind: America's high divorce rate, the popular status of agnosticism, and the "moderation" with which so many Americans try to avoid deciding where they stand on the question of abortion.