Beyond Netiquette
Putting our heads together
The first steps are simple-funny how we so often neglect them. But, like flossing, good habits, however mundane, make for a healthier future.
Commenting on how to comment would seem unnecessary, but...
Is Google making us stupid?
For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
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Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
I thought this was very interesting.
The first steps are simple-funny how we so often neglect them. But, like flossing, good habits, however mundane, make for a healthier future.
- Consider the comment section to be a place of relationships-even with the people you don’t know. For example, if you got out of hand, return and apologize. You’ll only look better for it.
- Don’t be a but head. “Interesting point, but…” can turn a potential work session into an argument. Tone of voice is essential in any discussion. Humor, too, must be handled with care. We all crave more wit, but snarky bites.
- Authors may omit significant resources; add important ones yourself, regardless of which side they support. Be wary, though, of advertising your own product.
- Ask the author questions about areas not fully covered in the article. Her answers may expose the really juicy parts of the issue.
- Pose a question to the entire group, if it helps us move forward.
- Read carefully before you comment. Nicholas Carr points out, in “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” that we aren’t reading as deeply or critically as we once did, due to the Internet’s ADHD-inducing qualities. (I cringe recalling the time I commented on an issue that an author had already addressed in his very first paragraph.)
- Simply share your own experience-yes, even if you are a newbie. Believe it or not, this adds weight to the discussion and can provide new angles that leave the experts tilting their heads to the side like puzzled puppies.
- Don’t search for vulnerable targets, for unintentional flubs in the article. A highhanded “I find it so ironic that you would….” doesn’t inform any of us about the issue and merely reveals things about your personality that even your own Mom doesn’t like.
- Remember that the article is about the subject, not about the author’s website(s). We don’t know what invisible disabilities, family crises, employer demands, and other life events have affected an author’s sites. We only know the merit of the author’s piece. I’ve yet to see a critique of an author’s markup (on a site not covered in the article) add something of real value to a comment section.
- Help bring a discussion back on track. An argument can send us chugging off to Chattanooga while the neglected article was about New York.
Commenting on how to comment would seem unnecessary, but...
Is Google making us stupid?
For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
...
Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
I thought this was very interesting.