RE: SMCQ14 Dumbing Down or Getting Smart?

“Now along comes Twitter, which totally reduces our collective thought leadership to 140 characters or less and in doing so, belittles and minimizes every big thought into a punch line or social limerick. It’s premature articulation if you ask me and it’s very unsatisfying.” — Joseph Jaffe, “Blogging is Dying, Twitter is to Blame,”

In this week’s question, the editorial board asked “What are the consequences of exposure to a constant high-volume stream of info?”#SMCQ14

A quick tour of the blogosphere (I picked up one actual book this week, a novel, which give you a hint of how much information I get online), revealed many pundits, theories and postulations on how hyperconnectivity may be damaging our ability to pay attention as much as it opens up a door of infinite knowledge.  We’ll be summarizing the comments we received, but in the meantime, here are some notes from the field:

“I learned that instant feedback from the web had caused me to change the “voice” of my writing.   Over time I had learned how to post messages and content that maximized chances of “retweets” “blog postings” , blah, blah, blah.Instead of saying what I believed – I was writing based on what I thought the audience wanted.  The result was a “dumbing down” of my messages.  And, a lack of authenticity.“ —Doug Hall, “Why Instant Feedback on the Internet Can be Bad,” Communty Marketing Blog

“In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world. The audience it was created to serve—middlebrow; curious, but not too curious; engaged, but only to a point—no longer exists.”—Michael Hirschorn,  “The Newsweekly’s Last Stand,” The Atlantic

“Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on. ” —by Walter Kirn, “The Autumn of Multitaskers,” The Atlantic

“The sheer volume of information which many of us are exposed to every day may actually impair our performance and add stress to our lives.” Data Smog (thanks @matt_klein)

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please add your comments or tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday @ 10am PST.

#SMCQ14