I have to agree with my fellow small-time blogger Meg Bon that this might be the best thing on all the Internets.

The InterWebs are abuzz over the latest Atlantic cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” and while I am sure that I will offer but one electronic drop in the deluge of reactions that will be and are appearing, I would like to plink down my two cents.

I am often irked by those who insist on bemoaning the loss of some fuzzy notion of “humanity” as technology progresses. I imagine there were plenty of folks who thought Gutenberg was a public nuisance, as his printing press was sure to make us all hermits and bookworms instead of, I don’t know, discussing the weather.

So was my trepidation as I began to read Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic piece, but on the whole, I was pleased to see it was not as filled with Luddite claptrap as I might have feared.

Except.

Carr describes the stated goals of Google’s founders, and begins with Sergey Brin’s quote,

“Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, [Larry] Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”

Carr’s response is unfortunately predictable, as he writes,

. . .their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

But that isn’t at all what’s implied by Google’s efforts. Carr leaps to a familiar and unfounded conclusion that technological advances mandate a rejection of less tangible and less quantifiable human experiences. Google (or the Web or what have you) does not prevent contemplation, it does not frustrate creativity, and it does not force one to click anything until one is ready. The telephone doesn’t prevent one from giving or receiving a hug, but it allows the geographically distant to connect. A book doesn’t induce forgetfulness, but it allows minds to share their contents. (Happily, Carr also predicts this criticism, noting overreactions to the advent of books and printing, and offering, “So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism.”)

These technologies are supplements, they are amplifications, they are universalizers. Might people be more tempted to eschew contemplation or become more isolated (or whatever the charge is against a given form of tech) as things become easier to access and require less effort to consume? Of course, but that is due to the choice of the individual and the makeup of their character. To blame the technology for what we choose to do with it is to truly remove a piece of our humanity: our responsibility for our own behavior.

* * *

Update: This post originally attributed the Atlantic article to Guy Billout, who is in fact the illustrator of the image in the original magazine piece, which begs the question: do I need Google to be stupid?

The title of this post is a lie.

But the ‘Zoid has once again selflessly used his podcast platform to plug my polyphonic pontificatories. He doesn’t have to, but he does, which is sporting. Return the favor, and give him your attention.

After a day and evening spent eating myself alive over the structure of my master’s thesis, I needed a break with some creative tinkering.

I wasn’t totally thrilled with the original version of this, so I took some time and rejiggered some of the sounds and levels, and I think it is much improved.

So click here to get this new version of “This New Town,” and download the love all over again…like it was the first time. Sigh.

The day we saw Ass Crack Man.

Oh. My. God.

No, seriously, look!

I’m telling you, everyone was watching THIS riding up the escalator.

Original Flickr link here.

Yes, I can see this place really is “absolutely exquisite.”

Original Flickr link here.

Is there even a difference?

Original Flickr link here.

Someone doesn’t think the Onion is the world’s finest news source.

Perhaps they are Near Earth Object fans.

Flickr link here.

Ken Kennedy, aka Kenzoid, has been kind enough to feature my music on his blog, Kenzoid’s Autonomous Zone, and its like-named podcast. Ken very recently got some major ‘net cred by having a post featured on BoingBoing, a promotional tool which has proved elusive to me. Congrats, Ken, and my sincere thanks for the plug!

Click here to check out KAZ Episode 27.

As a side note, Ken is one of many folks who have compared my music to that of Jonathan Coulton. What they don’t know is that, as of this writing, I have no idea who that is. I will have to do some listening so I can start horning in on Mr. Coulton’s turf. There’s not enough room for both of us in this one-nerd town (yes, there is).

]]> http://nearearth.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/props-to-kenzoid/feed/ Paul http://nearearth.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/sarah-palin-hates-polar-bears-and-wants-them-to-die/ http://nearearth.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/sarah-palin-hates-polar-bears-and-wants-them-to-die/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 14:24:30 +0000 Paul http://nearearth.wordpress.com/?p=206

We are led to believe that the zeitgeist is beginning to shift in regards to global warming and political attitudes toward the ecosystem as a whole. First, Democratic candidates were promising to run carbon-neutral campaigns, the GOP nominee delivers a major address on climate change, and more recently, the Evil Empire itself, the Bush administration, said we need to start taking care of our nation’s polar bears. There is a growing environmental enlightenment throughout the American political spectrum.

Which has obviously got some paleo-Republicans in a tizzy. Yes, she’s on many McCain veep shortlists, yes she’s a charming, affable, and talented politician, and yes she looks sweet and innocent, like a perky librarian (are there perky librarians?), but Alaska’s governor Sarah Palin has a dark side colder than the icy tundra which she oversees.

Sarah Palin wants to kill polar bears.

Oh, she’s not so overt as to publicly advocate for their wholesale slaughter, joyfully wallowing in their gleaming viscera, all the more pronounced as their red life fluid stains the snowy Alaskan vista, her cackles echoing against the now-disintegrating glaciers as the white landscape slowly creeps to a sickening bloody pink. But the AP has reported today that Gov. Palin is challenging the Department of the Interior’s decision to place polar bears on the threatened species list, citing lack of “evidence” and fears about the impact on oil producers.

Take a second and digest this. The person charged with the care of the habitat of polar bears is claiming that the oil-obsessed Bush administration is being too nice to polar bears, and is now going to do her civic duty in ensuring that no one drilling for oil will ever live in fear of stepping in polar bear poop (which I would assume would just be like a frozen rock by the time anyone actually stepped on it. It’d probably be pretty fun to kick around, or throw at your oil drilling buddies as a gag).

This should really get the McCain camp’s attention, though. I can see it now. McCain/Palin 2008: You’re next, American Green Tree Frog!

Oh wait, wait! Or! Or! McCain/Palin 2008: Fighting the War on Bear-orism!

Oooh! One more! The Straight Talk Express - 167 Red Bellied Turtles Flattened since 1999.

Oh, extinction of species, is there any way you’re not funny?