Civilization/Wales
(That’s The Persecution and Assassination of Western Civilization as Performed by the Inmates of Wikipedia Under the Direction of Jimbo Wales, in case you didn’t get the reference.)
Various folks have linked to “The Sleep of Reason,” a post on the Brittanica blog (did you know Brittanica had a blog?) from conservative librarian Michael Gorman, in which he blames the participatory Internet (a.k.a. “Web 2.0”) for, among other things:
an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise. Bloggers are called “citizen journalists”; alternatives to Western medicine are increasingly popular . . . millions of Americans are believers in Biblical inerrancy — the belief that every word in the Bible is both true and the literal word of God, something that, among other things, pits faith against carbon dating; and, scientific truths on such matters as medical research, accepted by all mainstream scientists, are rejected by substantial numbers of citizens and many in politics.
I know several of you are Wikipedia haters and others (well, not necessarily others) are possessors of the sort of specialized expertise the alleged flight from which Gorman so deplores. So maybe you can help me out here.
It’s apparent from the fate of such bellwether species as the humble apostrophe that the intellectual level of our public discourse leaves something to be desired. But what I want to know is:
- What is the evidence that the level is actually declining?
- To the extent that it is declining, what is the evidence that the median citizen is actually dumber, more ignorant, and/or more credulous? That is, how much of this effect can be explained simply by the fact that a broader selection of citizenry now has a public voice?
- That is, is the decrease in good things and increase in bad things that Gorman deplores real, or is it just that he no longer has the privilege of living in a comfortable bubble of educated experts?
- And to the extent that is real, is there any evidence that it’s really all happened since, say (using the founding of ICANN as an arbitrary birthdate for widespread internet-ness), 1998?
Don’t forget to show your work.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I have no contribution except to say that your post title is awesome.
Actually, I guess I do, but it’s just to say “Arrant Nonsense!” I don’t really think there’s a decline (things changing != things getting worse), and blaming it on the internet is crazy talk.
I’d show my work, but it’s in my head, and the zombies are at the door…arghml;k.hnmre,/
June 14th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Look! The zombies are showing his work!
Ew.
June 14th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Don’t get me started on Gorman. No, really.
It’s better to just ignore him. The Library blogosphere was all atwitter about the fact that he simply posted in a blog given all the crap he spewed about their effect on the decline of modern intellectualism as our (ALA) chief mouthpiece.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:02 am
So, what happens to libraries when the generation growing up now, who knows that everything you don’t know is findable on google, are adults? Why would it ever even *occur* to them to use a library? Or a book?
June 15th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I sent you email about that already!
One problem I have with Gorman (which has lessened slightly since his term as ALA president ended and he retired from running the Fresno St. library) is that he really believes that traditional higher-ed and traditional librarianship are the only worthwhile methods for communicating knowledge to students. This attitude only hampers our ability to understand new info search/retrieval needs in order to address gaps in info literacy.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Ditto Peter H on brilliance of title, even though I wouldn’t have gotten it without your expansion to the full title.
Re the question: some day I want to compile a list of quotations from people who’ve been decrying the imminent downfall of civilization, the death of culture, the end of civilized discourse, and most especially the destruction of language throughout history. I suspect it would be a very long list. (And it’s probably already available on the Internet.) Certainly people have been complaining about how the use of such-and-such term or phrase or grammatical construction tolls the death-knell for the once-proud glory of the English language for at least 150 years, and probably much longer.
To put it another way, and to quote you: everything was better when you were twelve.