If you’re looking for something to do in San Francisco Tuesday evening, I will be having a discussion with Thomas Goetz, the former executive editor of Wired, at the Nourse Theatre at 7:30 pm. The event is part of the California Academy of Science’s “Conversations on Science” series, held in association with City Arts & Lectures. You can buy tickets and get more information here.
Dear Mr. Carr
my son is writing a research article for his class in high school on technology and modern life.
Could you, please write what do you think are the most interesting articles available for high school student to understand problems you write about in your books deeper
Here’s an idea that might have a valuable cultural effect: depict legendary sage figures, such as Socrates, the Historic Buddha, and Jesus seizing the chance to teach us in the time of wearable computers with head-mounted displays. What a jackpot Google Glass would be for them! Now that could result in some great gospels, or Zen Koans. But Socrates would have to get a blog and worry about the search engines.
I wanted to ask this question of you, but time ran short last night:
It seems that the “backpressure” of modality is both holding us up from a speed perspective, and may also be the root of the problem that you have identified. The screen, keyboard, mouse all seem to have a physicality twitch and speed delay that tickles our distraction centers. Is it the knowledge transferred, or the method by which it’s delivered that is truly the problem? If the former, then we have significant problems head of us as a species. If the latter, then perhaps this age of screens and devices is merely a short transition period before more transparent knowledge delivery systems become available. If you were able to just “know” what your friends ate for dinner (to use a typical Facebook topic) versus having to have it sequentially viewed on a little screen, would that be as contributory to your perceived negative outcomes of technology integration with humanity?