Yes, I an attention span of at best 5 seconds. I am in love with the internet. Now I think its because I dont have to struggle with anything for longer than seconds before going to the next thing. The internet does shorten your attention span, and this point isnt even contentious.
There is so much out there, media files, downloads and streams, e-shopping, blogging, msn, webcams etc that there is no point in staying with anything if you can just flit about to your hearts content.
You can have 10 things going on at the same time: a movie, music, a book, streaming, pdf files, work etc.... I mean, why read a book anymore, right?
Heres one very potent reason why: the internet is not a substitute for books!
Okay, yes, ebooks are substitutes but not websites. We're not talking about magazines here, that put online the whole content of their print versions. I'm not talking encyclopedia britannica either. I'm talking real books, not just soundbytes.
Real ideas, not just commentary. There is a very real difference. Like this blog, its just commentary. Read a book and notice that literature is actually still an art form, not just random ideas strung together.
The thing about most online content is that its structureless. The writers, like their readers, suffer from short attention spans. They write either short, breathless commentary, or long rambling articles on whatever pops into their minds at the instant, flitting about from one thing to the other because it suits them. None of what they say is researched or verified. Run out of ideas? Skip to the next one! Always have something to say, about everything, but when you really examine the content, it says nothing.
Of course I'm all for a paperless future. E-books are our future. Get yourself a amazon kindle or iphone now, I say, so that you can keep your entire library of books in electronic form.
Thing is, not everything is in ebook form, to the detriment of society. If you refuse to pay for a paper book, thinking you can get a free ebook off the net, well, you're missing out. The best things out there are not on the net, I'm afraid. Not yet, anyway.
It used to be the old magazines vs books debate. Yes, there are good magazine journalists out there. But no matter how well researched an article is, its simply too short to even pretend to be of the same standard as a well written book. Sure, there is a skill to inventing soundbytes, or hip short stories with the odd quick turn of phrase. You're never really a master till you're quotable, after all. But in context, we see that the mastery is all an illusion.
A masterpiece is a masterpiece for its entire brilliancy, not for a couple of clever phrases.
We try and put forward original ideas. These can appear in any format or medium, from charcoal to C code. We get mixed up because we no longer know how to appreciate quality over volume. This is why we always resurface empty handed, despite the volume of information available to us in all forms. This is why we have this bizarre feeling that all these words and pictures are empty, because they don't enlighten us. If anyone can be a writer or an artist, then literature and art become common. They dont hit home anymore. We can't scratch that itch, that desire to discover an artist's sacrifice to create something that will last for eternity, not just a decade.
A photograph is now all point and shoot. A novel is all type type and email. Everything is now superficial by default unless it is deep.
All art requires sacrifice. All art requires apprenticeship and mastery first. This is not just design for a purpose. As human beings, we live for the deeper ideas. The computer itself is a deep idea. This is why we derive so much pleasure from it. What gives pleasure is necessarily deep.
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