From The Medium is the Medium, David Brooks:
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.
A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep, alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.
A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.
I would argue that the rise of technology in its first two phases - accessibility and user-generated - has caused a massive societal upheaval wrt critical thinking, psychology and conversation. As a result, we are increasingly horizontal thinkers, less prone to critical analysis, going from link to link, devouring short-term information without context and engaging in noise. See the comments section in any community web site.
New media has cause the dissolution and fragmentation of traditional media – it is more democratic, yes, but it also pressurizes centralized / editorialized media to report stories that titillate instead of illuminate, exacerbate instead of moderate. Newspapers, network stations and cable news increasingly follow the maddening crowd down into the extremities of the lowest common denominator to retain relevance and legitimacy. Blogs force feed us stories that invite us to come back and comment – the current Web 2.0 model surfaces the most vile and extreme of conversations so that their originators and followers will return and up the page views, the ‘engagement’ metrics and advertising dollars. And what does advertising do but aggrandize our descent into idiocy? Yes, we are getting more stupid.
The democratization of media also affects our governance. The bright klieg lights of 24 hour news, tips, blog updates and tweets surfaces the seedy affairs, hypocrisies, warts and ugliness of our political system – frankly, those stories have always been there, hidden from view. But the glare of new media also commit the political process to pander to the masses - the tea parties and you betchas parties of the world – because the masses now have direct access into a process that was originally set up to be Roman, and not Athenian. Politicians once had the flexibility to go against their core constituents, for the better in some cases where compromises could be made and disagreements could be smoothed over. They went to the capital, away from the moody influences of crowds that no more insights than their Bibles and the whispers of rabble-rousers, and worked. No more. Any move is scrutinized by the gibbering crowds back home, pickets ready and “Take back our country” signs marked up. The people of politics now spend more of their time justifying their electoral success, essentially campaigning for the next election instead of governing.
What’s the fix?
A balance education, of course. But more than that. New media needs to evolve - needs to be local and deliberate and sustainable. It needs to be slow.
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
- Thomas Jefferson