Nullsphere

Edit: I do realise there is a large dose of irony (AN: not the place where Ironians live) in the fact that I contest Riley’s article and go on to insult him. Well… I didn’t say I was better than him. Mind you, it is entirely possible that, had he done this in my physical presence, I’d have said pretty much the same thing in person.
Quoth Ronan’s adaptation of my sentiment: “Hi, I’m a former TechCrunch reader and I think your post was stupid. If I didn’t knew better I would think you are a douchebag Mr Riley.”
Edited accordingly.

In a recent Techcrunch post, Duncan Riley took upon himself to attack the acceptance speech of Doris Lessing as she received the Nobel Price of Litterature.

Out of a 4590 word-speech, he chose to retain 52 word abstract and twist it into a specious argument implying that Lessing had written an entire speech against the internet. The abstract is as follows:

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.

How could anyone sum up a speech about memory, difference in attitude towards culture and books could have been miconstrued as an anti-Internet speech is quite beyond me.
Upon reading Lessing’s full speech, one cannot help but be struck with the melancholy that tinges her words. She paints a vivid picture of culture in underdeveloped countries and opposes it to the apparent indifference of our “educated elite”.

In response to Riley’s post, after my first attempt where the word douche featured proeminently, I had written an argument as to why the Internet was not helping culture before realising half-way through that it was not the point of Lessing’s speech.

The point is, as far as I understand, that there are places in this world where culture is revered in a way that we do not anymore. Where books are considered more important than food because they represent an opportunity to better onesself.

Verba volent, scripta manent - Words fly, writ remains. There are stories to be told in the places that she describes that will never come into the “outside world” because no one is able to transcribe them.

Why? Because the storytellers do not know how to make their impermanent universe remain as they do not know how to write.
This was true of Celtic legends before they were written. Think of Aboriginal culture… Was it not also true of History, before writing was invented?

Some teach themselves and others, by wrenching the ability to write from the garbage left by our word-saturated, culture-poor lives.It shows the stark contrast between our culture -I use the term loosely-, where access to education and material is now taken for granted, and theirs, where nothing is certain, not even survival. For us, access to knowledge, culture and information is so abundant that no one actually pays attention to it anymore. Not quite a world away there are less priviledged places where food and cultural goods are scarce but seen as a way out of dire circumstances.

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To respond to the abstract which Riley chose to use against the entire speech, I will say this:

Over-specialisation

Over-specialisation is a fact. Just comparing US engineering degrees and my own, I realise that the one done in the US is much more specialised than mine. But does a CS major know anything about electronics if they don’t take an interest in it? I don’t think so.
How many people can say they master two fields of study? How many students who chose science in high school can say that they have a decent grasp of litterature?

Lack of experience in the real world

As for knowing nothing of the world… Does having information about equate with knowledge? I think not. I have plenty of information about electrical motors but I’d be hard pressed to know anything about them. In fact, that was the excruciating point of my second year of engineering school, lack of knowledge in energy transformation,
Replacing experiencing things with information about it is not an acceptable trade off.

I have limited experience of the world as it is, yet I realised that with my limited scope, I still had far more experience than most kids of my generation because I had books and I had travelled. While that doesn’t necessarily make me a better or more worthwhile person, it does make me appreciate what I had.

Since when has this equated with being dumb? There are many intelligent people who have no experience, living sheltered lives or having no means to gain this experience by travelling, seeing other places or even exchanging.
Does this make them stupid? No.
Does this make them lack experience? Definitely.

Today, with the Internet making everything virtually within reach (operating word: virtually), experience seems to have diluted into a vague notion not too distinct from “seen”. It is true that the Internet gave me experience in some fields but it could have never been an adequate replacement for experiencing most of it offline. It only broadened the opportunities.

I dissagree however that culture and education is the only saviour. After all, did Pol Pot not receive a first class education in France, before he went on to massacre those of his people that he considered not worthy to live?

Being read

“Being well read” used to be a big achievement, the sign that one had become someone respectable and educated. Now, I too often hear, sometimes from within my own circle of family and friends, that people do not read because they do not like to read. It takes a considerable amount of time, which they do not have. I find this quite tragic.

I see it like this: if I had not read so many books as a child, I would have neither a good grasp of English (which is not spoken here) nor as good a grasp of French as I have (for someone whose mother tongue is not French).

Ever since the advent of SMS and instant messaging (even including IRC here), spelling and writing in general have become dismal in many youths. It follows that reading becomes difficult because when you’ve substitute “u” for “you”, “m8″ for “friend”… well, reading a book is like reading hieroglyphs without the Rosetta stone.

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As for the way in which Duncan Riley chose to present his disagreement?

To be brutally honest, he did it like a douche pre-schooler . It was no better than the LiveJournal rantings of a 15-year old highschooler who hasn’t had his morning Xanax.

Since when has it been acceptable to insult an opponent whose opinion you dissagree with? Oh yes, since the Internet made anonymous trolling possible.

In my not so humble opinion (after all, is this not my personal soapbox?), one should read Lessing’s speech with an open mind. Sure, Lessing might be an old woman with little exposure to the magnificence of the Intarwebs but to call her out on a 10% abstract with such brutal words leaves me speechless.
Riley chose to dig below the low road for the sake of sensationalism and attack personally rather rebuking the snippet with counter-examples.

Oh and as for recommending “Wikipedia”, does “defacing” mean anything? Sure, Wikipedia is great (and I personally love it) but it can’t be the ONLY source. The CIA, self-promoters and random jackasses have been at it to edit entries. To limit onesself to it exclusively opens the door to brain-washing, propaganda and lack of clarity.

In conclusion, it takes a rare breed of philistine not to be moved by the speech and retain only the part about the Internet and computers. Ducan Riley, do yourself a favour and yank the wire out of your ass. You’ll be a better human for it and give us a breather from your cloying stupidity. Not everyone who questions the “good” that the internet brought is a doddering old fool. As we forget too often on the Internet, it is not necessary to agree with someone but it is necessary to receive their arguments with an open mind.

After all, who is the bigger fool? The one who asks the question or the one who scoffs without thinking about it?