Autumn 2009

Three Tweets for the Web

by Tyler Cowen

Welcome the new world with open arms—and browsers.

The printed word is not dead. We are not about to see the demise of the novel or the shuttering of all the bookstores, and we won’t all end up on Twitter. But we are clearly in the midst of a cultural transformation. For today’s younger people, Google is more likely to provide a formative cultural experience than The Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22 or even the Harry Potter novels. There is no question that books are becoming less central to our cultural life.

The relative decline of the book is part of a broader shift toward short and to the point. Small cultural bits—written words, music, video—have never been easier to record, store, organize, and search, and thus they are a growing part of our enjoyment and education. The classic 1960s rock album has given way to the iTunes single. On YouTube, the most popular videos are usually just a few minutes long, and even then viewers may not watch them through to the end. At the extreme, there are Web sites offering five-word movie and song reviews, six-word memoirs (“Not Quite What I Was Planning”), seven-word wine reviews, and 50-word minisagas.*

The new brevity has many virtues. One appeal of following blogs is the expectation of receiving a new reward (and finishing off that reward) every day. Blogs feature everything from expert commentary on politics or graphic design to reviews of new Cuban music CDs to casual ruminations on feeding one’s cat. Whatever the subject, the content is replenished on a periodic basis, much as 19th-century novels were often delivered in installments, but at a faster pace and with far more authors and topics to choose from. In the realm of culture, a lot of our enjoyment has always come from the opening and unwrapping of each gift. Thanks to today’s hypercurrent online environment, this is a pleasure we can experience nearly constantly.

It may seem as if we have entered a nightmarish attention-deficit culture, but the situation is not nearly as gloomy as you have been told. Our culture of the short bit is making human minds more rather than less powerful.

The arrival of virtually every new cultural medium has been greeted with the charge that it truncates attention spans and represents the beginning of cultural collapse—the novel (in the 18th century), the comic book, rock ‘n’ roll, television, and now the Web. In fact, there has never been a golden age of all-wise, all-attentive readers. But that’s not to say that nothing has changed. The mass migration of intellectual activity from print to the Web has brought one important development: We have begun paying more attention to information. Overall, that’s a big plus for the new world order.

It is easy to dismiss this cornucopia as information overload. We’ve all seen people scrolling with one hand through a BlackBerry while pecking out instant messages (IMs) on a laptop with the other and eyeing a television (I won’t say “watching”). But even though it is easy to see signs of overload in our busy lives, the reality is that most of us carefully regulate this massive inflow of information to create something uniquely suited to our particular interests and needs—a rich and highly personalized blend of cultural gleanings.

The word for this process is multitasking, but that makes it sound as if we’re all over the place. There is a deep coherence to how each of us pulls out a steady stream of information from disparate sources to feed our long-term interests. No matter how varied your topics of interest may appear to an outside observer, you’ll tailor an information stream related to the continuing “stories” you want in your life—say, Sichuan cooking, health care reform, Michael Jackson, and the stock market. With the help of the Web, you build broader intellectual narratives about the world. The apparent disorder of the information stream reflects not your incoherence but rather your depth and originality as an individual.

My own daily cultural harvest usually involves listening to music and reading—novels, nonfiction, and Web essays—with periodic glances at the New York Times Web site and an e-mail check every five minutes or so. Often I actively don’t want to pull apart these distinct activities and focus on them one at a time for extended periods. I like the blend I assemble for myself, and I like what I learn from it. To me (and probably no one else, but that is the point), the blend offers the ultimate in interest and suspense. Call me an addict, but if I am torn away from these stories for even a day, I am very keen to get back for the next “episode.”

Many critics charge that multitasking makes us less efficient. Researchers say that periodically checking your e-mail lowers your cognitive performance level to that of a drunk. If such claims were broadly correct, multitasking would pretty rapidly disappear simply because people would find that it didn’t make sense to do it. Multitasking is flourishing, and so are we. There are plenty of lab experiments that show that distracting people reduces the capacity of their working memory and thus impairs their decision making. It’s much harder to show that multitasking, when it results from the choices and control of an individual, does anyone cognitive harm. Multitasking is not a distraction from our main activity, it is our main activity.

Consider the fact that IQ scores have been rising for decades, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. I won’t argue that multitasking is driving this improvement, but the Flynn effect does belie the common impression that people are getting dumber or less attentive. A harried multitasking society seems perfectly compatible with lots of innovation, lots of high achievers, and lots of high IQ scores.

With the help of technology, we are honing our ability to do many more things at once and do them faster. We access and absorb information more quickly than before, and, as a result, we often seem more impatient. If you use Google to look something up in 10 seconds rather than spend five minutes searching through an encyclopedia, that doesn’t mean you are less patient. It means you are creating more time to focus on other matters. In fact, we’re devoting more effort than ever before to big-picture questions, from the nature of God to the best age for marrying and the future of the U.S. economy.

Our focus on cultural bits doesn’t mean we are neglecting the larger picture. Rather, those bits are building-blocks for seeing and understanding larger trends and narratives. The typical Web user doesn’t visit a gardening blog one day and a Manolo Blahnik shoes blog the next day, and never return to either. Most activity online, or at least the kind that persists, involves continuing investments in particular long-running narratives—about gardening, art, shoes, or whatever else engages us. There’s an alluring suspense to it. What’s next? That is why the Internet captures so much of our attention.

Indeed, far from shortening our attention spans, the Web lengthens them by allowing us to follow the same story over many years’ time. If I want to know what’s new with the NBA free-agent market, the debate surrounding global warming, or the publication plans of Thomas Pynchon, Google quickly gets me to the most current information. Formerly I needed personal contacts—people who were directly involved in the action—to follow a story for years, but now I can do it quite easily.

Sometimes it does appear I am impatient. I’ll discard a half-read book that 20 years ago I might have finished. But once I put down the book, I will likely turn my attention to one of the long-running stories I follow online. I’ve been listening to the music of Paul McCartney for more than 30 years, for example, and if there is some new piece of music or development in his career, I see it first on the Internet. If our Web surfing is sometimes frantic or pulled in many directions, that is because we care so much about so many long-running stories. It could be said, a bit paradoxically, that we are impatient to return to our chosen programs of patience.

Another way the Web has affected the human attention span is by allowing greater specialization of knowledge. It has never been easier to wrap yourself up in a long-term intellectual project without at the same time losing touch with the world around you. Some critics don’t see this possibility, charging that the Web is destroying a shared cultural experience by enabling us to follow only the specialized stories that pique our individual interests. But there are also those who argue that the Web is doing just the opposite—that we dabble in an endless variety of topics but never commit to a deeper pursuit of a specific interest. These two criticisms contradict each other. The reality is that the Internet both aids in knowledge specialization and helps specialists keep in touch with general trends.

The key to developing your personal blend of all the “stuff” that’s out there is to use the right tools. The quantity of information coming our way has exploded, but so has the quality of our filters, including Google, blogs, and Twitter. As Internet analyst Clay Shirky points out, there is no information overload, only filter failure. If you wish, you can keep all the information almost entirely at bay and use Google or text a friend only when you need to know something. That’s not usually how it works. Many of us are cramming ourselves with Web experiences—videos, online chats, magazines—and also fielding a steady stream of incoming e-mails, text messages, and IMs. The resulting sense of time pressure is not a pathology; it is a reflection of the appeal and intensity of what we are doing. The Web allows you to enhance the meaning and importance of the cultural bits at your disposal; thus you want to grab more of them, and organize more of them, and you are willing to work hard at that task, even if it means you sometimes feel harried.

It’s true that many people on the Web are not looking for a cerebral experience, and younger people especially may lack the intellectual framework needed to integrate all the incoming bits into a meaningful whole. A lot of people are on the Web just to have fun or to achieve some pretty straightforward personal goals—they may want to know what happened to their former high school classmates or the history of the dachshund. “It’s still better than watching TV” is certainly a sufficient defense of these practices, but there is a deeper point: The Internet is supplementing and intensifying real life. The Web’s heralded interactivity not only furthers that process but opens up new possibilities for more discussion and debate. Anyone can find space on the Internet to rate a product, criticize an idea, or review a new movie or book.

One way to understand the emotional and intellectual satisfactions of the new world is by way of contrast. Consider Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The music and libretto express a gamut of human emotions, from terror to humor to love to the sublime. With its ability to combine so much in a single work of art, the opera represents a great achievement of the Western canon. But, for all Don Giovanni’s virtues, it takes well over three hours to hear it in its entirety, perhaps four with an intermission. Plus, the libretto is in Italian. And if you want to see the performance live, a good seat can cost hundreds of dollars.

Instead of experiencing the emotional range of Don Giovanni in one long, expensive sitting, on the Web we pick the moods we want from disparate sources and assemble them ourselves. We take a joke from YouTube, a terrifying scene from a Japanese slasher movie, a melody from iTunes, and some images—perhaps our own digital photos—capturing the sublime beauty of the Grand Canyon. Even if no single bit looks very impressive to an outsider, to the creator of this assemblage it is a rich and varied inner experience. The new wonders we create are simply harder for outsiders to see than, say, the fantastic cathedrals of Old Europe.

The measure of cultural literacy today is not whether you can “read” all the symbols in a Rubens painting but whether you can operate an iPhone and other Web-related technologies. One thing you can do with such devices is visit any number of Web sites where you can see Rubens’s pictures and learn plenty about them. It’s not so much about having information as it is about knowing how to get it. Viewed in this light, today’s young people are very culturally literate indeed—in fact, they are very often cultural leaders and creators.

To better understand contemporary culture, consider an analogy to romance. Although many long-distance relationships survive, they are difficult to sustain. When you have to travel far to meet your beloved, you want to make every trip a grand and glorious occasion. Usually you don’t fly from one coast to another just to hang out and share downtime and small talk. You go out to eat and to the theater, you make passionate love, and you have intense conversations. You have a lot of thrills, but it’s hard to make it work because in the long run it’s casually spending time together and the routines of daily life that bind two people to each other. And of course, in a long-distance relationship, a lot of the time you’re not together at all. If you really love the other person you’re not consistently happy, even though your peak experiences may be amazing.

A long-distance relationship is, in emotional terms, a bit like culture in the time of Cervantes or Mozart. The costs of travel and access were high, at least compared to modern times. When you did arrive, the performance was often very exciting and indeed monumental. Sadly, the rest of the time you didn’t have that much culture at all. Even books were expensive and hard to get. Compared to what is possible in modern life, you couldn’t be as happy overall but your peak experiences could be extremely memorable, just as in the long-distance relationship.

Now let’s consider how living together and marriage differ from a long-distance relationship. When you share a home, the costs of seeing each other are very low. Your partner is usually right there. Most days include no grand events, but you have lots of regular and predictable interactions, along with a kind of grittiness or even ugliness rarely seen in a long-distance relationship. There are dirty dishes in the sink, hedges to be trimmed, maybe diapers to be changed.

If you are happily married, or even somewhat happily married, your internal life will be very rich. You will take all those small events and, in your mind and in the mind of your spouse, weave them together in the form of a deeply satisfying narrative, dirty diapers and all. It won’t always look glorious on the outside, but the internal experience of such a marriage is better than what’s normally possible in a long-distance relationship.

The same logic applies to culture. The Internet and other technologies mean that our favorite creators, or at least their creations, are literally part of our daily lives. It is no longer a long-distance relationship. It is no longer hard to get books and other written material. Pictures, music, and video appear on command. Culture is there all the time, and you can receive more of it, pretty much whenever you want.

In short, our relationship to culture has become more like marriage in the sense that it now enters our lives in an established flow, creating a better and more regular daily state of mind. True, culture has in some ways become uglier, or at least it would appear so to the outside observer. But when it comes to how we actually live and feel, contemporary culture is more satisfying and contributes to the happiness of far more people. That is why the public devours new technologies that offer extreme and immediate access to information.

Many critics of contemporary life want our culture to remain like a long-distance relationship at a time when most of us are growing into something more mature. We assemble culture for ourselves, creating and committing ourselves to a fascinating brocade. Very often the paper-and-ink book is less central to this new endeavor; it’s just another cultural bit we consume along with many others. But we are better off for this change, a change that is filling our daily lives with beauty, suspense, and learning.

Or if you’d like the shorter version to post to your Twitter account (140 characters or less): “Smart people are doing wonderful things.”

*Not everything is shorter and more to the point. The same modern wealth that encourages a proliferation of choices also enables very long performances and spectacles. In the German town of Halberstadt, a specially built organ is playing the world’s longest concert ever, designed to clock in at 639 years. This is also the age of complete boxed sets, DVD collector’s editions, extended “director’s cut” versions of movies, and the eight- or sometimes even 10-year Ph.D. But while there is an increasing diversity of length, shorter is the trend. How many of us have an interest in hearing more than a brief excerpt from the world’s longest concert?

Full text PDF available here.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University. This essay is adapted from his new book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. He blogs at www.marginalrevolution.com, and can be followed on Twitter at tylercowen.
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COMMENTS (71)

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and in no way represent the views or opinions of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This section is moderated by Wilson Quarterly staff.

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" I’ll discard a half-read book that 20 years ago I might have finished. " This is often held up as evidence for shortened attention spans, but with such a deluge of media at our exposure, why waste a few hours reading a book your not enjoying. In many ways, this abundance of content forces a conciseness not seen before. A tweet makes you think precisely about how to fit the maximum information into 140 chars.

Posted by: vagabond_king | 10/18/09

Irrational multitasking?

Cowen says "Researchers say that periodically checking your e-mail lowers your cognitive performance level to that of a drunk. If such claims were broadly correct, multitasking would pretty rapidly disappear simply because people would find that it didn’t make sense to do it." But people still get drunk, even though it certainly lowers your cognitive performance. And people do all sorts of unhealthy, irrational, uneconomic things--despite what economists think.

Posted by: Meaghan | 10/19/09

Web bombast on our brain

I used web from last ten years I know reading book you get pure joy and self satisfaction that kind of joy you never get on web only tit bit satisfaction you get on web.About blog most vulgar and low standard writing you see there.

Posted by: Ramesh Raghuvanshi | 10/21/09

A major truth is revealed in this piece

I think quite a bit about the meaning of living on the 'Internet' as I do a good part of the time. I believe Tyler Cowen makes an important point when he argues that we do not simply jump around randomly but rather tend to follow a group of interests. I too believe he is correct in saying that this in a way takes the form of a narrative, a narrative of our own which is being driven forward by every next 'hit'. I too would agree that for those who care to do so the Internet permits both a broadening and deepening of knowledge. However there are negative elements, and they relate to the whole 'democratization of publishing'. Not only does the 'Internet' contain vast resources in Information it also contains much disinformation. It too is filled with quite disgusting low- level fanaticism and hatred. Every one can post and this means that the worst are posting with passionate intensity. I would also as a long - time many- book reader say that at a certain point the 'Internet' actually accelerated my book- reading. This related to my at that time writing and posting many reviews. But on the whole I would say it does take away generally from the deep long- term absorption which book- reading gives. But this is I believe the usual and not the necessary case. All in all I do have a sense that the development of a universal network of Information access and distribution is for the good. But of course this is not necessarily an 'eternal development' and should some kind of Totalitarian Network take over the world, all the postings even the Googles will proven to have been in vain.

Posted by: Shalom Freedman | 10/21/09

What is classic?

One definition of a classic work of art is that people return to it again and again and see something new in it each time. The art work stays the same but the viewers life experiences shape their perceptions. By constantly creating and recreating new material on the web this aspect of contemplating great cultural icons is lost. It would be like having a marriage where neither spouse remembered their past life together while constantly looking for the next new event in their shared life.

Posted by: gobasso | 10/21/09

Culture

Culture isn't just high culture (the Rubens painting, opera or symphony). It is, and has always been, anything that pervades your everyday life.

Posted by: P Dust | 10/21/09

Cowen's Paean

As someone who teaches the fundamental expression of literacy--writing--I can tell you that students have more experience than I had at garnering information, but less understanding of how to synthesize and organize that information. Reading, close, careful reading provides this skill by having students sustain attention and teaching them to comprehend relationships within a single text. My web-addicted students cannot do this. I suspect the author can because he has had a deep experience of literacy that my students never pursue much less acquire in any meaningful and lasting way.

Posted by: Clark | 10/21/09

Calm Down

Yes, the general point is well taken, that we ought to be open to the new possibilities that a change like that from analogue to digital bringing. But so much of this is close to that pervasive internet boosterism. In addition his understanding of a work of art and the whole's relation to the parts, and how to define the 'parts' pretty much disqualifies him from addressing any aesthetic matter whatever. Thus, I'm not sure what "culture" the writer has in mind.

Posted by: Mitch | 10/21/09

context

Well, I didn't read your whole article because it was rather long so I wonder if you touched on the key enabler of the short message? That would be the shared context that our society provides that allows us to jump right to the meat because we have already stipulated all the background from our electronically shared experiences.

Posted by: misterb | 10/21/09

Has the internet had an effect on human attention span

For all its power and promise I find it difficult to accept that the internet has changed how we perceive. From an evolutionary perspective 20 years is just too short a time see any effect at all. If nature had made such a large jump I would expect to see bodies lying dead on the roadside because of their inability to tweet. On the other hand, I don't think brain plasticity provides a basis for this claim either. The Flynn effect has a much longer history than any presumed Internet effect on attention span and the explanation for the observed rise in IQ scores remains controversial. I don't know that an internet effect has even been observed.

Posted by: The Man | 10/21/09

Perhaps more hopeful than true...

Like Meaghan below, I've seen years of open internet "drunkenness," even at work, where folks presumably would fear losing their jobs. As for the internet forcing folks to be concise, this, in my experience as a writer and editor, doesn't mean they are more thoughtful about their words: too often, the opposite seems true. I also sense, though it is only anecdotally, that people ARE less patient face to face and online. In my experience, anyway, there seems to be a belief that because we can so easily control and shape our experiences online, we are entitled to do the same thing in real-time and are thus less tolerant. "Hurry up and wow me," seems to be the underlying tone of too many interchanges. The problem is, having loads of witty references packed into your conversation doesn't necessarily make you witty, just a purveyor of wit. On the other hand, I have to admit to feeling a growing kind of civility in certain places: restaurants, stores, at the dry cleaners. It could be that these places where the internet doesn't interfere are becoming refuges, or it might just be that the economy is making every business owner smarter about their people skills. But the point that I found missing in Cowen's discussion was an acknowledgement that more time spent online (and with technology of all sorts) means less downtime, less unmediated time, which to me translates into less time for personal reflection. It is in those unprogrammed spaces that we truly come to understand ourselves (as opposed to just having fun, being entertained, or even making money), and by extension the world, not during the time we are cramming ourselves with new bits of information. Admittedly, reflection has always been a scarce commodity, and to be deeply reflective, you often need outside input, which the web can and does provide. But I see no evidence, and Cowen doesn't give any (beyond the vague claim that our IQs are going up without saying exactly why and what that means) that we are truly getting better at processing what we read and see and turning it into thoughtful, useful, growth inducing information. We're greedy for facts, but I'm not sure we are truly richer. I guess what I'm talking about is emotional intelligence, and from my perspective it actually feels like our culture's quotient of this is going down not up. Finally, I appreciated Cowen's metaphor comparing our internet access to culture as more like a marriage than our previous long-distance affair. He might go one step further, though: the internet feels to me like a marriage where a lover has been moved into the house, providing a constant "easy out" when the job of actually relating deeply to and understanding each other and the world gets too scary.

Posted by: SewRight | 10/21/09

something more...

maybe there is something else (and more valuable) to be obtained by the act of finishing a book that you don't 'enjoy' - self-discipline, respect for other people's work and ideas. just wondering.

Posted by: old school | 10/21/09

progress?

To compare the assembled short term memory bits of a slasher film, a digital photo and (probably a pop tune or maybe just a fragment?) and say this melange is an improvement over the reverence and majesty of Mozart's Don Giovanni is insane.

Posted by: virbry | 10/22/09

re: Three Tweets for the Web

I'm 69 years old, and no luddite. I love my laptop and spend about six hours a day at the keyboard, both online and in Word, writing a legacy for my grandsons and theirs, plus visiting my favourite "portal" sites, such as huffingtonpost.com and aldaily.com., through which I linked to Professor Cowen's article. There's no question in my mind but that the web has enriched my life beyond measure, but I was in my forties when I bought my first so-called computer, an Atari 500, so I could play bridge and chess. Each evolutionary leap forward made computers more useful, less need to work in bits and bytes, discard APL, Fortran and the Tower of Babel that computer languages seemed to comprise. I was even appointed the "computer buyer" for the retail chain of department stores I was with for more than 25 years, one of many different assignments, In the early '80's, with the mendacious marketing of Commodore, Texas Instrument, Coleco and other me-too-ers that have fallen by the well-deserved wayside, I pitched upper management that the toys being offered as computers in our stores were doomed. We were selling them hand over fist, but the handwriting was on the wall, even then for all these pretenders with when compared to Apple and the emerging presence of Microsoft. The opening remarks to the top executives were "Why do I need a home computer -- and is there a God?" The first poser was factually debatable and the second a staunch certainty amongst the faithful, proof unnecessary. Now, more than 25 years later, retired, I cherish my daily visits to not only favourite epapers, emags, and blogs, but also enjoy spending time surfing new sites that have been recommended. All of this, for me, is keyed, however, to the formal and informal educational pursuits for practical and/or purely enjoyable pursuits to be had through reading, book in hand, its feel, texture, typeface almost as important as the content. The hours spent with a "good book", either a quick read or with lingering savour over such novels as Nabokov's "Lolita", John Barth's "The Sotweed Factor", or poetry by writers too many to be named have contributed a cultural breadth and joy that a monitor cannot deliver. The good professor argues that "multitasking" is desriptive of equal cultural values and contribution to life's pleasures, just the latest generational leap forward As one who can chew gum and walk at the same time -- is that not multitasking? -- the breadth and rapidity of access is wonderfully welcome, but made richer, more contextual only by a well-rounded romance with the libraries and bookstores that I requented so regularly. The "Flynn Effect" objectively measures just one-leg of the tripod that is a firm foundation: IQ, EQ and EI. I doubt that there's been a rise in the latter two. Multitasking can be a cop-out for shortened attention span, not time efficiency. The rapidity of switching amongst all the toys and tools that exist today, easing access of communication does not dirtectly relate to quality of life improvements. Multitasking can be as pointless as the scurrying about of a gerbil on crack. Twitter is for twits --tweet, tweet, tweet. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but show me the soul of a tweet in comparison to that in a well-cpmposed Haiku. I see the de-emphasis on literacy, attention to handwriting, to the pleasures of a well-turned phrase, especially in K-12, as fiscally foolish. California's issuance of more than 25,000 notices of impending lay-off in March of this year to High School teachers and employees is shocking, more so following the 10,000 handed out in 2008. I can only wonder at the national statistics! I'm involved and exposed to many very bright and accomplished young adults, most of them with framed paper on their walls attesting to proficiency in one field or another, but like kids with crayons, their attention is focussed on staying within their chosen lines, rarely adding colour outside the lines. HAL, the computer in "2001: A Space Odyessy" sure had a heck of a lot of knowledge, but I wouldn't want to have a beer with him. Be kind to the printed word. Take a book to lunch.

Posted by: Cranky Pants | 10/23/09

trails

My internet is with me everywhere now. I find it interesting that you have specific interests that you pursue. It's like instead of buying books on gardening, you think it's some big deal to find information about gardening online. And so you fill up your day hopping from one interest to another, and you equate this with long term efforts, like book reading. To me it sounds as if you feel a little guilty about it. Have you ever considered just following wherever the net leads you? Just cutting loose entirely from whatever preconceived notion you had of "interest" and going wherever that flickering flame of curiosity leads? This is the real power of the thing- not in learning answers to questions, but in following trails into unknown territory.

Posted by: Pooleside | 10/23/09

A Possible Answer or Balance!

How about "Slow Reading"? On the one hand, truly rich skilled response to texts and issues is rare today. On the other, "less is more," pare down operas, novels when possible. How about making tiny texts and images but loading them with richly-structured interrelationships etc. etc.? X: a 3-p. comic strip "I Wonder" by Joan Hilty, or a 5-line poem if well constructed, "unpacks" (with reader care and skill) delightfully, but doesn't take all day or night. Comix: Chris Ware's "Jimmy Corrigan" is great lit., but 300 pp. too much, aim for distillation. And so many books are "op-ed" books, 220 pp. when 900 words would do? Construct texts well, then Slow Read to unpack (still takes a skill which must be learned)... "Later..."

Posted by: Infovoyeur | 10/28/09

at last

here here! good on ya!

Posted by: matty m | 11/3/09

Web bombast on our brain

My internet is with me everywhere now. I find it interesting that you have specific interests that you pursue. It's like instead of buying books on gardening, you think it's some big deal to find information about gardening online. But people still get drunk, even though it certainly lowers your cognitive performance. And people do all sorts of unhealthy, irrational, uneconomic things--despite what economists think.

Posted by: Dating Advice | 1/8/10

Re:Web bombast on our brain

Books nowadays are ignored by people most especially students because of the presence of the internet. They can search easily with the help of a computer with internet connection. I observed this to them. They're too lazy to read books or even scan them. But I believe that books are the best tool for education

Posted by: essay writers | 2/1/10

Same logic

Posted by: Online Dating | 2/12/10

Technology Helps alot

Posted by: auctionsu | 2/12/10

Golden Age for wise

In fact, there has never been a golden age of all-wise, all-attentive readers. But that's not to say that nothing has changed. The mass migration of intellectual activity from print to the Web has brought one important development: We have begun paying more attention to information. Overall, that's a big plus for the new world order.

Posted by: Auctions | 2/15/10

Carefully Regulate

even though it is easy to see signs of overload in our busy lives, the reality is that Most of us carefully regulate this massive inflow of information to create something uniquely suited to our particular interests and needs-a rich and highly personalized blend of cultural gleanings.

Posted by: Travel | 2/15/10

...

Posted by: Sex Chat Rooms | 2/17/10

Knowledge

Interesting!

Posted by: Mike | 3/8/10

In the early '80's, with the mendacious marketing of Commodore, Texas Instrument, Coleco and other me-too-ers that have fallen by the well-deserved wayside, I pitched upper management that the toys being offered as computers in our stores were doomed. We were selling them hand over fist, but the handwriting was on the wall.

Posted by: Grow taller | 4/26/10

http://breadmakerreview.co.uk/

There's definitely a big problem with so called "multi-tasking". Many people seem to think that doing lots of things at once makes them efficient even if that means facebook, twitter and MSN at the same time! Information overload is a major problem.

Posted by: Jason | 5/6/10

Foulard soie

The printed word is not dead> but soon.

Posted by: Foulard en soie | 5/6/10

Wishful thinking

This reads like wishful thinking from someone that has been up too late or drunk too much wine. The killer app of web 1.0 was email because of its impact on communication in business not because it was a "new cultural medium". Web 2.0 is also a commercial phenom as Google and Apple have so successfully identified. Google is a marketing success. Apple is selling most of their technology to Steve Jobs' chronological peers while using the whiff of youth and rebelliousness - the same combination Harley Davison have been using so successfully. Comparing the advent of the novel with comic books and rock and roll is a flight of fancy and reveals the same temporal-centric egotism that has lists of the 100 Greatest Americans or 50 Most Influential People In History chock-a-block with people that were around in the last 50 years or so.

Posted by: the wahdad | 7/22/10

There are much much much much more tweets for the web, and everyone knows it!

Posted by: buy curriculum vitae | 8/9/10

planning

This looks like the kind of article which I support

Posted by: planning jobs | 9/2/10

Web influence

Though nowadays internet affects almost all other media, it wouldn't destroy or substitute them. Think about printed books: even though almost every family and every school has its own computer with internet paper books are still used.

Posted by: cv writing service | 11/15/10

Web influence

Though internet greatly changed our life I doubt that it will substitute paper books, or will make them less popular.

Posted by: cv writing service | 11/15/10

Web influence

I totaly agree with the statement that Internet will not totally substitude the printed word. It always was and will be much more pleasent to read the paper book or peper then to read it from the screen.

Posted by: essay | 11/29/10

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I can't believe how much of this I just wasn't aware of. Thank you for bringing moreinformation to this topic for me. I'm truly grateful and really impressed.

Posted by: dress | 11/30/10

Great work :0

Great work :):) .....really appreciable

Posted by: Cleveland Marketing Companies | 12/7/10

Great work :0

I totaly agree with the statement that Internet will not totally substitude the printed word.

Posted by: Cleveland Marketing Companies | 12/7/10

Or....

Actually, as of last week Google officially launched Google eBooks. Now you can Google AND read at the same time. Let's face it people, more and more pieces of our lives are going online these days, especially when it comes to entertainment. We can either grow, change and adapt or become irrelevant. Your choice.

Posted by: Sasha | 12/21/10

Or....

We could use the web to read more. Google just launched their eBooks site last week and they tout it as the most complete collection of digital books.

Posted by: Sasha | 12/22/10

nice mozart reference... way to bust on Ludwig Van...

Posted by: Click Here | 1/6/11

We could use the web to read more. Google just launched their eBooks site last week and they tout it as the most complete collection of digital books.

Posted by: vps | 1/12/11

I agree

The printed word is not dead. It will not fade even with technology.

Posted by: Buy Sex Toys | 1/29/11

What do you mean by three tweets on the web?

Posted by: PMP exam simuation | 1/30/11

books

Even in over time - time of progressive IT technology online papers will not extrude printed ome`s...

Posted by: cool | 2/3/11

Brustvergrößerung

I like it very much because it has very helpful articles of various topics like different culture and the latest news. I am a googler and search on many topics.

Posted by: Brustvergrößerung | 2/15/11

Twitter

I just started using twitter. I like it a lot!

Posted by: indianapolis | 2/16/11

http://www.gameswindowspc.com

Google is the best search engine ever. Indeed I agree that technology beyond social media has its new phase. This has opened up innovative idea about another modern idea as well.

Posted by: windows for games | 2/22/11

http://regenerectusa.com

Thanks for this. Integrating twitter into real time search results is key to finding up to the minute news and updates. Twitter is made of real people saying real things.

Posted by: Regenerect | 2/22/11

http://TryRegenerect.com

Thanks for the article. It amazes me how in just a few short years the entire world has become instantly connected through social media. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: Buy Regenerect | 3/8/11

I know. Isn't it amazing. It went from nothing to gigantic. I'm looking forward to seeing it expand further.

Posted by: Clear | 3/14/11

http://www.iregenerect.com

I am always looking for good reads like this. Social networks are the wave of the future!

Posted by: RegenerectMen | 3/20/11

rre

But people still get drunk, even though it certainly lowers your cognitive performance. And people do all sorts of unhealthy, irrational, uneconomic things--despite what economists think.

Posted by: professional seo | 3/26/11

of cource

The printed word is not dead. It will not fade even with technology. akon 2011

Posted by: akon 2011 | 3/28/11

http://www.africanmangos.net/african-mango-diet-pill-%E2%80%93-a-diet-supplement-that-gives-the-results-you-want/

yeah.. I agree with what he says in this line *Not everything is shorter and more to the point. The same modern wealth that encourages a proliferation of choices also enables very long performances and spectacles"

Posted by: African Mango Extracr | 3/29/11

That was really very informative

I agree on this "Indeed, far from shortening our attention spans, the Web lengthens them by allowing us to follow the same story over many years’ time. If I want to know what’s new with the NBA free-agent market, the debate surrounding global warming"- indeed there are many things to discover but the bottomline still remains the same....

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Posted by: | 4/14/11

http://www.karmasutravideos.com/

Many website are now very much available on social networking sites. Each of it is appropriate for your needs. It delivers great significance in our living today.

Posted by: kamasutra pictures | 5/12/11

nice post

Posted by: ian | 5/12/11

http://www.certificationkey.com/Microsoft-Certification-Training/70-680.php

I have a large leftovers text file. Most of it I’ll never use for anything, but once a month I look at it and get some inspiration for an idea I ditched previously.

Posted by: 70-680 | 5/17/11

I think I missed something

hello, the printed world will never be dead. But it is going to be digital and more comfortable to bring and read. So, don't think that printed novel and like this going to be dead. However, thanks for sharing this nice topics.

Posted by: dubstep | 6/21/11

http://www.ranktiger.com

Now, with the advent of technology everything now is possible. We, people just depend of the products of technology. Internet was now popular and used worldwide. Even a child knows how to use a computer.

Posted by: seo agentur | 8/1/11

Very nice post even i would say that whole blog is awesome. I keep learning new things every day from post like these. Good stuff!

Posted by: SEO Company | 8/5/11

Bravo!

For one of the most sophisticated blogs I've encountered in some time! It's just amazing how you can remove something just because of how beautiful it is visually.

Posted by: smith | 8/11/11

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it is great pleasure to visit your site. thanks

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Posted by: | 8/21/11

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There are plenty of lab experiments that show that distracting people reduces the capacity of their working memory and thus impairs their decision making. It’s much harder to show that multitasking, when it results from the choices and control of an individual, does anyone cognitive harm. Multitasking is not a distraction from our main activity, it is our main activity.

Posted by: Erik | 8/25/11

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“Smart people are doing wonderful things.” So nice and true quotation.

Posted by: http://www.maplesurveys.co.uk/ | 9/7/11

Excellent article, thank you.

Posted by: | 9/18/11

Plumber Bedfordshire

With the help of technology, we are honing our ability to do many more things at once and do them faster.That,s really true.

Posted by: | 10/17/11

I enjoyed your blog. It’s easy to read, the content is good, and you’re an educated writer unlike most of the blogs I come across when searching on th

I enjoyed your blog. It’s easy to read, the content is good, and you’re an educated writer unlike most of the blogs I come across when searching on this topic. I will check back in the future and see if you have more articles. Thanks for posting this, I appreciate the information and the effort you put into your site.

Posted by: home security | 12/2/11

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Posted by: | 12/16/11

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