Again I read this profound and provocative Atlantic-article by Nicholas Carr how the internet affects our thinking and would like to post it to your attention.
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Carr is right of course: The net does transform the way we think, and are productive. And it is not so much something we do (going online) but a state of mind we are in (being online). It is the extension of the concept of "flow" through which cultural theorist Raymond Williams used to describe the effects of television.
What is missing I think are systematic analyses on the ways in which being online, and being distracted in the way Carr describes, can actually allow for new levels of productivity. Intuitively, I would say that drifting through the net, reading something here, looking at a vodcast there, and writing something elsewhere can actually be an own kind of productive process. Research would have to systemize and specify this.
Posted by: Alexander Gutzmer | November 27, 2008 at 05:27 PM