Kakutani, M. (2010, March 17). Text without context. The New York Times.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com
In Kakutani’s article on technology, specifically the internet, she
claims that digital media is changing nearly every facet of our culture
and that the way writers and scholars do research, as well as the way we
all take in information, are especially affected. She goes on to assert
that new advances in technology are a direct cause of “the public’s
growing attention deficit disorder and susceptibility to information
overload…”, thus causing a misunderstanding of what is fact and what is
opinion. She backs this up by discussing the fact that many online sites
offer polls and comment boards where users can put in their own two cents
on news and entertainment articles, and that these are often times given
more attention than the articles themselves. The ideas presented in
Kakutani’s article back up my idea that information can be both objective
and subjective in nature, and that technological advances make us more
susceptible to confusing fact and fiction. This confusion means that we
are more likely to misunderstand what is going on in the world around us,
as she states in paragraph 25 “politicians and voters on the right
and left not only hold different opinions from one another, but often
can’t even agree over a shared set of facts…”
Kakutani, M. (2010, March 17). Texts without context. The New York Times.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/
In this review, the author examines some critical questions dealing with
the intersections of information and art (pp 1-8), the switch of primary
distribution to a web-based form (pp 9-23), and the corresponding
implications on human reading habits (pp 10-38). The author also looks
briefly into the issue of copyright, as it applies to art and information
differently, and different opinions of how the law should reflect the
nature of these crafts (pp 5-8). Also critiqued is the increasingly brief
attention span of our culture, as demonstrated in our
“[overstimulation] to the point where only sensationalism and
willful hyperbole grab people’s attention”. This, the author suggest,
allows us to even more easily twist information, and only take away what
we want to learn from it (pp 8-33). This source will be useful for its
strong criticism on the modern era of digital distribution of
information, such as it is laced with social networking and enhanced by
our inherent human flaws. The author plays hardball with todays
information culture, and this resource is an excellent tool to balance
our progress-oriented mindset of assuming faster means better. It shows
another side of the internet, and a darker side of our tenuous human
relationship with information, and how easily it can be manipulated for
the ends we desire.
Kakutani, M. (2010, March 17). Text without context. New York Times. Retrieved
from https://nytimes.com
In her article exploring possible effects of new communication devices
on our attention span, ability to understand written context, and
perceive ideas different from our own, Kakutani asserts that negative
effects of the internet culture are evident. Through many sources, she
shows how the activity of reading seems to be drastically changing. On
perhaps a deeper level, she seems to claim that even the motivations for
people to read are changing into a superficial, self-involved,
short-sighted aims for mostly backing up one’s shallow or puerile mental
pose. There is particular relevance to my idea about information in the
repeated theme of infantilization throughout Kakutani’s article. The fact
that several other examinations of this topic she draws from seem to lean
toward a tendency of childishness or immaturity in this cultural trend,
may itself explain some of the curious effects on people’s behaviours. We
humans are as babes when it comes to technology. Perhaps without
realizing it, throughout her references, she shows that these trends are
measured in just a few short years or perhaps decades. These flashy new
toys have been (and are) thrust upon us all with relatively little time
to properly incorporate them into beneficial - or at least balanced -
human interaction.
