One highlight of the Milken Global Conference was an excellent panel discussion of how new communication technologies are changing the way that people think and interact.
Moderated by the amusing Dennis Kneale of Fox Business, the panelists were:
Nicholas Carr, Author, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”
Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University
Clifford Nass, Thomas M. Storke Professor, Stanford University
Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT
I am proud to say that I sat through the entire panel without checking my iPhone or iPad. But it was a struggle.
The full panel is a bit more than an hour. If you are short on time, you may still enjoy the first few minutes of movie clips illustrating some perils of modern technology. Here’s the link again.
Donald, thanks for posting the link and summary. We recently publish a White Paper discussing elements of this problem, particularly the problems and opportunities of so much information at our immediate disposal. http://www.attensa.com/download/files/ReducingInfoOverload.pdf
Decades ago my mother commented, only half-jokingly, that the high divorce rate could be traced to the TV remote control. Once that was in people’s hands, they became less patient with what they had if it didn’t seem optimal at the moment. Or as Seinfeld said about men using the remote control, we don’t want to see what’s on TV; we want to see what else is on TV.