Opinion Trapped in the Twitterverse

I don’t mean to be a spoilsport,and I don’t think I’m a Luddite. I edit a newspaper that has embraced new media with gusto. I get that the Web reaches and engages a vast,global audience,that it invites participation and facilitates newsgathering. But before we succumb to digital idolatry,we should consider innovation often comes at a price. I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves.

Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking With Einstein recalls one example of what we trade for progress. Until the 15th century,people were taught to remember. Feats of memory that would today qualify you as a freak weren’t unheard of.

Along came the Mark Zuckerberg of his day,Johannes Gutenberg. As we became accustomed to relying on the printed page,the work of remembering fell into disuse. The capacity to remember still exists,but for most of us it stays parked in the garage. Sometimes the bargain is worthwhile; I would certainly not give up the pleasures of my library for the ability to recite Middlemarch. But Foer’s book reminds us that the cognitive advance of our species is not inexorable.

My father,who was trained in engineering at MIT in the slide-rule era,lamented the way the pocket calculator diminished my generation’s math skills. Many of us have discovered that navigating by GPS has undermined our mastery of city streets and even impaired our sense of direction. Typing pretty much killed penmanship. Twitter and YouTube are nibbling away at our attention spans. And what little memory we had not already surrendered to Gutenberg we have relinquished to Google.

My inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect,our pursuit of meaning,genuine empathy,a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity. The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop,I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from … from … wait,what was I saying?

My mistrust of social media is intensified by the ephemeral nature of these communications. They are the epitome of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other,which was my mother’s trope for a failure to connect. I’m not even sure these new instruments are genuinely “social.” There is something decidedly faux about the camaraderie of Facebook,something illusory about the connectedness of Twitter. Eavesdrop on a conversation,and more often than not it is reductive and redundant. Following an argument is like listening to preschoolers quarreling: You did! Did not! Did too! Did not!

The other day I tweeted “#TwitterMakesYouStupid. Discuss.” Almost everyone who had anything profound to say in response chose to say it outside Twitter. In an actual discussion,the marshalling of information is cumulative,complication is acknowledged,sometimes persuasion occurs. In Twitter,opinions and our tolerance for others’ opinions are stunted. Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid,it makes some smart people sound stupid.

The shortcomings of social media would not bother me awfully if I did not suspect Facebook friendship and Twitter chatter are displacing real rapport and real conversation,just as Gutenberg’s device displaced remembering. The things we may be unlearning,tweet by tweet —-complexity,acuity,patience,wisdom,intimacy — are things that matter.