Self-Promo

Imagine my surprise to find that James Fallows plucks the following passage from Small Pieces Loosely Joined, my upcoming book, in an article in The New York Review of Books about a discussion in the Boston Review of Republic.com by Cass Sunstein. He uses the quotation to counter Sunstein’s “central claim that the Internet has a narrowing effect on people’s minds”:

…there is more and more to distract us—more sites to visit, more arguments to jump into, more dirty pictures to download, more pure wastes of time. The fact that the Web is distracting is not an accident. It is the Web’s hyperlinked nature to pull our attention here and there. But it is not clear that this represents a weakening of our culture’s intellectual powers, a lack of focus…. Maybe set free in a field of abundance, our hunger moves us from three meals a day to day-long grazing…. Perhaps the Web isn’t shortening our attention span. Perhaps the world is just getting more interesting.

Cool! Of course, I mean that in a blase, post-hip sort of way.

But, enough about me. (Hah!) Fallows’ article is its normal thoughtful, lively self. Plus, it ends with a long letter from Bill Gates explaining why he would never and could never have said “640K should be enough for anyone,” a canard that — like Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet — will probably never take No for an answer.

[Thanks, Doc and Kevin Marks for pointing the article out.]

Categories: Uncategorized dw