Similar to the posts below, I sought out Clive Thompson's book to be much different than what McChesney had to offer in his dreary last pages. I appreciate the optimism brought to this writing, and it makes it much more enjoyable than our previous book. Not to diss McChesney, but Thompson makes many good points about technology that doesn't have me running for the hills.
On page 25, Thompson says that, "Our brains are remarkably bad at remembering details. They're great at getting the gist of something, but they consistently muff the specifics." (Thompson 25). These sentences happened to strike me specifically because they're exactly what people point to first when downgrading the internet. People have been complaining about how the internet has made us less attention/detail-oriented, yet our brains are literally not wired to remember every little thing that passes through our mind.
Thompson continues with the fact that, "If we remembered every single detail of everything, we wouldn't be able to make sense of anything. Forgetting is a gift and a curse: by chipping away at what we experience in everyday life, we leave behind a sculpture that's meaningful to us, even if sometimes it happens to be wrong" (Thompson 25). This reminded me immediately of a comparison to college degrees, if everyone could get a degree from Harvard, Harvard wouldn't be seen as prestigious anymore would it? The same goes for our memories; we remember what stands out [good or bad that is the downfall] and mull over the normaties. You can read more about it here .
Elle,
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what you are saying here but I really agree with the notion of forgetting be a bit of a gift. I think, as humans, we are very adaptive and our brains are tuned that way. Making sense of things that don't make complete sense is our nature and in many ways that is our "way of knowing/learning". When you look at it from afar it seems that not being able to remember everything would be not good in any way but I believe it has made us an adaptable species. Our brains certainly aren't perfect and I don't think it would necessarily be good if they were. Comparing our brains to a "perfect" brain is also a bit irrational. I think to a certain degree you can agree with me here (as I got from your post).
Elle I really liked your post! I like how you related it to every day life. I love the point that they bring up of "forgetting is a gift and a curse." I can't really choose between which I would rather have, remember everything or remember nothing. That is a little extreme. But I think technology and how convenient cell phones and laptops are that we just give up on trying to memorize phone numbers, email addresses, and all those minor aspects that we once had to worry about. Do you think a person should learn how to do simple things like that or not bother if they are able to look it up in less than thirty seconds. My public speaking class discussed this topic of what people should fill their minds with. For instance, should a person bother to know how to do basic math or should we not fill our minds with knowledge that we can look up or does that make us too dependent on technology? Coming to an end of this post, I think forgetting is a gift because then we can use that space to fill our brains with new information.
ReplyDeleteHey Elle,
ReplyDeleteI think that your post is absolutely spot-on, Humans aren't meant to keep so much information logged in our mind. In the very beginning of the book there was the example of the chess games. Computers are able to "think" ahead several moves while humans are limited to a more "one move at a time" strategy - which isn't as bad as some people make it seem. I think that what you said about our brains not being wired to remember everything goes along with that perfectly - we aren't meant to remember every single detail of everything ever and we definitely aren't meant to be able to think so far ahead. It's nice to hear people defending the Internet, because, as we've read in both this class and our Public Speaking class, there are a lot of people who are quick to pick out all the negatives and ignore the positives.