People Get Distracted! Blame Technology!
from the trend-pieces dept
With Nick Carr's book out, misleadingly suggesting that the internet is bad for our brains, it looks like the NY Times has decided to a trend piece on the same concept, except even more misleading. Practically the entire article hinges on one family whose father is sometimes distracted. The article opens with the fact that he once missed an email from someone who wanted to buy his company. And, um, it's because the internet makes us dumb? The connection is never made. The fact that people miss emails all the time, just as they might have missed snail mail in the past, is never made either. Honestly, the guy in the article sounds a lot like me, in terms of how I work, but he also sounds a lot like my Dad back when I was a kid and he would have his desk of papers disorganized. That's not a condemnation of technology. It's just that some people can be a bit absent-minded at times. Of course, the article throws in quotes from neuroscientists and other studies to give it that scientific coating, but what the researchers talk about has absolutely nothing to do with what makes someone miss an email or want to spend some time playing video games. It's one of those newspaper trend pieces that sounds good, but doesn't even come close to holding together its central thesis if you look at the details.
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Filed Under: blame, multitasking, technology
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Par For the Course
This is just the same type of journalism the mainstream media publishes ALL...THE...TIME. It's really maddening, and I think the NY Times is one of the worst offenders.
Earlier today there was some article (I think on CNN, possibly from the AP) about the dangers of traveling on planes with kids in your lap. There were, of course, no statistics or general evidence that might support an article on the subject - just a couple individual examples.
The first mentioned that a young kid being held by his mom died in a plane crash along with 100+ other people while the mom survived. I guess the other 100 or so must not have been buckled up either, because I've never heard of somebody dying in a fucking plane crash with their seat belt on...
The second example mentioned a little boy that bumped his head in severe turbulence and was fine. Why the concerned parents in the article must be forced to buy an extra seat by the government instead of, you know...just buying an extra seat? I have no idea because that was never explained. Sounded like the paper was paid off by somebody with a financial incentive to sell more airplane seats.
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It's the wrong way around
Unfortunately, stupid people also write about the Internet, which is how we get this problem.
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Your desktop (in opposed to desk) is so disorganized you need to clean it up. You have documents scattered everywhere, folders all over the place, what a mess.
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Journalism makes you dumb
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Nick Carr and the NYT are just trying to make money off those who are gullible.
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They're hiring the highest amount of social media managers than any other company has ever done in this country.
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Technology Is Bad
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The computer cannot be any smarter than the person sitting in front of it.
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Re: The computer cannot be any smarter than the person sitting in front of it.
If the dad in the article couldn't run off every 10 minutes to check his email or whatever, if he didn't have 4 screens staring him in the face he'd find something else to "distract" with.
(I only hope his attempts at love making don't take 10 minutes. Just imagine! ;-))
Actually he sounds and comes off as someone who would invent things to do no matter what technology was around to enable it.
He's become a human doing rather than a human being. And that don't take no internet or all its tubes and other mythical connections!
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Makes perfect sense to me
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why
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