Corrections

Into the Electronic Revolution

Cameron Beaudreault

Do me a favor; put away your cell phone, turn off the music and pay attention. If you are reading this essay to learn something, you must actively engage with it; otherwise you may as well go back to checking your Facebook news feed. Nowadays, people can access any information from anywhere, including their Facebook and Twitter accounts, the vast stores of information on Wikipedia, and news updates on the presidential elections; all from the comfort of their phones. So is this technology inhibiting us, or assisting us? Some academics view the popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter as proof that the Internet has little place in education. One of these pundits, a former Harvard professor named Sven Birkerts, single-handedly catalyzed this polemic with his writings. Because we are no longer living in the 90’s, a question must be raised: what if our society’s intellectual problem is not too much technology, but that the technology we have is underutilized?

Birkerts believes that the Internet is going to be the death of intellectualism; his essay “Into the Electronic Millennium” reflects on his encounter years ago with a professor who wanted to sell him his entire book collection. When asked to explain his divestiture, the man replied that he saw that computers were the future, and that his books represented a lot of pain for him. For Birkerts, a bibliophile by nature, this memory was rather unsettling. “It is a kind of marker in my mental life, for that afternoon I got my first serious inkling that all was not well in the world of print and letters” (470). This idea was corroborated by others, “new men and new women” who sold their books “as if heading to the future also required the destruction of tokens from the past” (470). From Birkerts’ perspective, people who sold their libraries and bought computers were rapidly abandoning the world of print. Considering the massive bookshelves in my home that have sat untouched for some time, though I come from a family of readers, I am inclined to agree. Online reading is seductively convenient compared to the process of finding and buying books.     

This seduction raises an important question: given the convenience and ubiquity of the Internet, how harmful could it be? As a much younger form of communication than print, we will only know whether or not it caused a break with the past in posterity. Anticipating the potential harm it could cause, Birkerts describes inherent problems with the Internet; unlike print, it is not subject to either the rules of logic or syntax. Worse, arguments on the Internet rely on anecdotes and rumors rather than facts, and lack historical context. Moreover, Internet content requires neither sustained reading nor processing, and is often published with no quality control, making it unusable for serious purposes (472).

Even so, print carries its own set of drawbacks; research is a painstaking process that becomes even more arduous by sifting through books. Moreover, the depth of a book depends almost entirely on the reader’s background. Unless he or she has previous knowledge of Salic Law or the foundations of European Monarchy, he would little benefit from reading the unabridged edition of Don Quixote. Perhaps most distressing is that written language is ambiguous, and like visual media can become propaganda in the wrong hands. I find that the two mediums have complementary roles; Google and Wikipedia are efficient tools for gathering data, while books donate structure and points of debate to one’s research. Web hyperlinks enable a deeper understanding of a subject, and books keep one’s thought processes coherent. The comments sections on websites provide exposure to multiple points of view, but analytical papers ensure that an investigation stays focused. The problem, as seen in the quote above, is persuading people that the two can coexist.

How can they coexist when students use the Internet for so many things other than school? Observing this, Birkerts argues that the Internet has worsened the decline of America’s education systems, and warns us of the “possibility that the young truly ‘know no other way,’ that they are not made of the same stuff that their elders are” (473). He fears that it has destroyed the work ethic of today’s youth, and that technology may be the only “way” they know how to learn. The other “ways” are the classroom paradigms of the lecture, the seminar, and the Western Canon. I agree with the letter of this warning; physical textbooks hold little interest with students who grew up with technology, especially for boys, since they are both naturally hyperactive and mainly visual learners. But if the lingua franca of today’s youth is technology, then why not teach them with it? I remember my 11th-grade Anatomy classes as being among the most informative and enjoyable parts of high school, because our teacher used animations to illustrate the lessons. This makes me believe that other classes would meet success with this type of illumination.

One of the reasons that public school students struggle is because almost none of their classes emphasize visual learning. Worse, much of the work they do is so repetitive that it effectively discourages learning. The effects of both problems are so pervasive that they can even be seen in the “best” students; while researching for a public speaking class last year, I found a graduation speech by Erica Goldson, the valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens high school, that described how the work that went into her success ultimately stunted her education.

"While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning (4)."

Erica’s exceptional grades came at the cost of her ability to pursue extracurricular activities. By going through school  ‘by the book’, she was unable to explore possible future areas of study. While Birkerts would argue that her method of learning 'by the books' was an effective teaching method, she herself noted that she felt lost and underdeveloped intellectually. Can we really say that Birkerts’ views hold water here? Erica Goldson wouldn’t think so.

Because so few of today’s students are interested in the classics, some have suggested that it is time to revise the Western Canon. Such a change would cause more harm than good, because it would hinder students from learning the foundations of western civilization. Fellow classicist and NYU student Andrew Montalenti argues that while the Canon itself should be preserved, the style in which it is taught must be changed, for: “the Canon does not make the artwork within it great; it is the artwork that makes the Canon great. By remembering this, our interpretation of these works can be richer and much more complicated than a mere deductive confirmation of expert opinion” (2). Students must be allowed to draw their own conclusions from reading these works. This would give them the ability to be as interested in the Canon as they are in reality shows. A number of recent movies (“Romeo and Juliet”, “300” and “Gladiator”), shows on HBO (“John Adams” and “The Tudors”) and video-games (the “Assassin’s Creed” series) accomplish this by giving audiences a pleasurable, accidental introduction to the Canon. Teachers could use these to convey lessons in the lingua franca while respecting the intellectual sovereignty of their students. Note that while visual media such as a videogame or a movie can be an effective aid to the academic process, it should be used as a teaching tool; by itself, it is not a linchpin for learning.

          Assuming visual media to be of no use for teaching, Birkerts predicted three major events that may come true should the Internet displace traditional learning methods. With no impetus for people to develop their communication skills, the majority of people will increasingly use “plainspeak”; a dumbed-down language similar to “newspeak” from George Orwell’s 1984 (474). If Internet discussions remain shallow, there will be a collective forgetting of historical perspectives (475). Worse, without exposure to diverse perspectives, a social collectivization is highly probable; people will be polarized along national, ethnic and religious lines, and the concept of individuality will cease to exist (475). If these predictions came true, it would spell the end of free will for everyone but the political and economic elite. For this reason, before attempting to counteract them, we must first make sure that they haven’t already happened.

If Birkerts’ assertions were correct, I would have no business using computers to do schoolwork. If, however, I found an investigation that dispelled his worries, my only concern would be to use technology responsibly. I found such an investigation by the BBC regarding “the social consequences of the Internet” (16). As the author Michael Lewis made headway into the project, he found that the network actually encouraged the exercise of free will.

What I was after was more like the Internet consequences of society. People take on the new tools they are ready for, and only make use of what they need, how they need it. If they were using the Internet to experiment with their identities, it was probably because they found their old identities were inadequate. If the Internet was giving the world a shove in a certain direction, it was probably because the world already felt inclined to move in that direction. When I realized this I stopped worrying over the social consequences of the Internet and began simply to watch what was actually happening on the Internet. Inadvertently, it was telling us what we wanted to become (16).

People embraced the technology, not out of coercion or hypnosis, but because they wanted to. This allowed for experimentation with their identities, as well as the creation of entirely new ones; many youths used it to explore interests in music, finance and law, which destabilized institutional monopolies of these industries. This, I believe, was the cause of peoples’ worries; thousands of jobs were at risk for every company to go bankrupt.

This concern over job security also helps explain Birkerts’ fears; a growing disinterest in literature threatens his ability to teach, and it is understandable that he would believe the Internet is to blame. It is also possible to address these fears while meeting the needs of students like Erica Goldson, Andrew Montalenti, and myself. Our desire to learn is still present, but we also want to develop perspectives that are not derived solely from our teachers. We should be able to share our knowledge with our peers and remove the intellectual inequalities that come from a one-way, teacher-to-student learning paradigm. This project could be undertaken though a website that allowed students to discuss and collaborate on their assignments, thus alleviating the burden on teachers to make sure no one is left behind. By distributing our knowledge amongst ourselves, more class time could be spent on learning new things rather than reviewing old lessons, enabling us to more fully realize our academic potential. I intend to create such a website, and hopefully find a solution that would please even the likes of Sven Birkerts. Rather than trying to prove him wrong, I want to reassure him, and myself, that our past will not be forgotten in the electronic revolution.

Works Cited:

Birkerts, Sven. “Into the Electronic Millennium.” Occasions for Writing. Ed. Robert DiYanni and

Pat C. Hoy II. Boston: Thomas Wadsworth, 2007. 469-76.

Montalenti, Andrew. “Questioning the Canon.” Mercer Street. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II. New York: NYU
    College of Arts and Science. 2003. 1-7.

Goldson, Erica. (2010, June). Here I stand. Valedictorian speech presented at Coxsackie-
    Athens High School. Coxsackie-Athens, New York.

Lewis, Michael. “Next. The future just happened.” New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 2001.

16.216.