Mind Over Mass Media

The article I'll be referring to is found on NYTimes.com. Unfortunately, NYTimes limits the amount of articles you can view in a given month. Thus, the second link provides a copy of the article on a secondary website, if the first -- the NYTimes article -- is unavailable to you.

NYTimes Version

Edge.org Version (same article)

This article in the NYTimes was published June 10, 2010. I found it by simply typing "New Media" into the search box at NYTimes.com on a lark. It stood out because it is written by Steven Pinker, who is a certified badass and a psycholinguist. What does that mean? He's smart and deals with language in addition to psychology. If I remember right, he also teaches at Harvard, and probably has numerous other accomplishments, such as published books.

This book is the reason that Steven Pinker stuck out to me: I was assigned his book on linguistic theory for a first year seminar class at UMass. Boston.

I found it curious that Pinker would be writing about New Media. Though once I thought about his writing, I thought it was a bit less strange. His book is fairly simple, easy to understand, and focuses on how language is more or less an evolutionary trait. That is why all human cultures, regardless of location, have a language. This evolutionary methodology lends itself fairly well to the grand idea of New Media. In his opinion piece, Pinker talks about how popular culture often reacts negatively to evolving methods of consumption and dispersal of information. He also notes that this is whether it be the printing press or Twitter. He also points out that this is merely a product of necessity: that while the amount of knowledge increases, the amount of hours in a day, or a person's given available time to sift through this knowledge, has not.

Thus, Pinker's point that this evolution in media is fairly important. Especially now with the advent of the glorious Information Age. Just how the printing press and the mass production of the Christian Bible helped propagate literacy in the Western world, these new electronic tools are helpful in promoting thought-sharing and knowledge-connectivity.

A final observation that interests me is that Pinker is talking to people who oppose this evolution. In his article (at least the NYTimes one) he cites one article on how Powerpoint is corrupting everyone, then another about how Twitter is the devil and shrinks attention spans. I find it odd and curious that I didn't really notice this before. This kind of opposition to New Media.

Or perhaps I just never took it seriously.