Creation vs. Communication

A couple of days ago, Steven Johnson provided a rousing defense of the death of “deep reading,” to borrow a phrase from Nicholas Carr’s new book.

Mr. Carr argues that the internet is destroying out ability to concentrate on things for long periods of time. This is a problem, because what has made our culture great (technologically speaking, at least), is the ability to concentrate for long periods of time on big ideas. Quantum gravity won’t solve itself, y’know.

Mr. Johnson’s rebuttal is simple:

“most of what we do during the day doesn’t require our full powers of concentration”

The problem with this argument, of course, is that it assumes that everything we do during the day is equally important. What if it’s precisely those things which require our full powers of concentration that are really important? In which case, arguing that the internet has made the unimportant things easier seems to be beside the point.

The second part of Mr. Johnson’s argument is that:

it cannot be denied that good ideas also emerge in networks.

Mr. Johnson cites history. Now, I cannot deny that good ideas have seemed to emerge from crowded places or networks – but it is one thing to say that they emerge from networks, and quite another to say they are invented by networks.

Networks are good at communication. A large, crowded network can – in theory – communicate and compare a large number of ideas. Thus, we would expect good ideas to become popularized by networks.

That does not mean we expect them to be created by such networks.

Indeed, Mr. Johnson’s example – that aims to falsify Mr. Carr’s thesis – demonstrates precisely this point:

the sophistication and nuance of media commentary has grown dramatically over the last 15 years. Mr. Carr’s original essay, published in The Atlantic — along with Clay Shirky’s more optimistic account, which led to the book “Cognitive Surplus” — were intensely discussed throughout the Web when they first appeared as articles, and both books appear to be generating the same level of analysis and engagement in long form.

The ideas established in the longer pieces are being communicated and judged by the networks.

New ideas of similar weight are not being created.

The blogosphere has faced the accusation of “preying upon” the news media for years; it discusses, shares, and links to information gathered by the news media, but does not provide information of a comparable value on its own. With a few exceptions – who are more unaffiliated journalists than bloggers – bloggers excel at communicating information, but not at creating content.

Of course, all of this is a moot. While I agree with Mr. Carr in general, Mr. Johnson raises a very good point:

The intellectual tools for assessing the media, once the province of academics and professional critics, are now far more accessible to the masses

Namely, that the internet has opened the doors for anyone to write something.

However, the growth of blogs does not mean that “deep thinking” is declining. It just means more people are publishing content.

It could be that some people are inclined to think deeply, and some people are not; in which case, the internet may not alter that proportion; it may just increase the material published by those who do not think deeply. Those who communicate more than they create, who share more than they evaluate.

In which case, the internet would be a very good thing. It would not detract from the proportion of people doing the deep thinking, but it would increase the size and scope of the networks which share, evaluate, and popularize the results of deep thinking.

Unfortunately, it’s rather hard to tell which is the case..