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[pyshnov]

I don't want to be rude by not answering.
Your quotation - "In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo." is good and not out of place. I understand it as irony. But, do you think he was seriously talking about education for women and them getting "exposed" to Michelangelo?

[litcrittr82]

Let me just start by asking Are students not using their brains or are they using them in a new way? 

Both.  We're using our brains in a new and deficient way.  I'm throwing out the infamous 'studies show' line becuase I'm multitasking at work right now and don't have time to substantiate my claim (very performative); but studies show that multitasking brains run like old, rusty engines.  The human brain is capable of multitasking, but with serious limitations.  That's why, for example, you're not supposed to talk on the phone while you're driving a car.

Perhaps at some point we'll develop ways--maybe cognitively, maybe legislatively--to deal with information overload in productive ways, such that we can recover our ability to read critically, to follow a sustained argument, to construct a sustained argument, to write clearly and properly, etc.  But for now, we're incapable of reading a book. 

FWIW, I'm not anti-technology, nor do I think we should abolish technology (whatever that would look like)--that's just insane.  Instead, we need to catch up to it--to understand how to wield it better, and how to avoid situations in which it wield us.

[pyshnov]

litcrittr82, technology never says that you must be multitasking. It only makes it possible (provided you don't mind failing in your every task). It is only the evil people who tell you about the necessity of multitasking as dictated by technology.

[trentsands]

"And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair[...]"

[larryc]

Studies show that people today are increasingly unlike people in the past. Conclusion: The world is going to hell in a hand basket.

Today we have information shot at us from a fire hose 24/7. Young people are growing up in this environment and crafting new ways of finding, sifting, and analyzing information. Those of us from previous generations can only catch glimpses really of this immersive world. And we see it and we cluck "Hmph! Kids today!"

Too much of this discussion has been about young people as consumers of digital culture, but it behooves us to notice that they are actually the primary producers of digital culture as well. The mixes and mashups and coding of the under-30 generation is an astonishing burst of human creativity. And making this stuff is hard. Making a few minutes of video, with images and sounds from dozens of different sources, requires a long and concentrated effort, a level of technical skill, and a broad cultural literacy to make the right choices.

[litcrittr82]

Studies show that people today are increasingly unlike people in the past. Conclusion: The world is going to hell in a hand basket.

Today we have information shot at us from a fire hose 24/7. Young people are growing up in this environment and crafting new ways of finding, sifting, and analyzing information. Those of us from previous generations can only catch glimpses really of this immersive world. And we see it and we cluck "Hmph! Kids today!"

Too much of this discussion has been about young people as consumers of digital culture, but it behooves us to notice that they are actually the primary producers of digital culture as well. The mixes and mashups and coding of the under-30 generation is an astonishing burst of human creativity. And making this stuff is hard. Making a few minutes of video, with images and sounds from dozens of different sources, requires a long and concentrated effort, a level of technical skill, and a broad cultural literacy to make the right choices.

This is coming from a 25 year old who is currently building a Web site at work, reading CHE, and eating lunch: this is a fine point, that the consumers of digital culture don't seem to get much credit for also being producers of it.  And certainly producing this stuff does require considerable skill and concentration.  Yes, we're making it.  But two things:

1) For those of us doing what I'm doing now at my job, we don't exactly have much control over or access to the means of production.  They tell me to make a Web site, or make a Web site better, and I do it for money.  I try to make it usable, so I suppose this requires some cultural literacy; but otherwise, chances are, I'm making a Web site for someone else's agenda, and adding more junk to the fire.  Concentraion and skill go in in a very localized sense, and what comes out is a digital medium that contributes toward the erosion concentration on a larger scale. Plus, I'm pretty bound up in the marketing process, and I don't have much creative agency.

2) For so many of those who are creating blogs or independent media productions, and who thereby have more creative agency, I find that the T.S. Eliot issue applies: people are ready to sound off and hurl more stuff into the atmosphere, but they're not as culturally literate as one should be to broadcast 'expert opinon' to the world.