On Pond Skating and Scuba Diving

I wasn't exactly sure how to navigate the many links that were provided for us, but with respect to the few responses to Carr's article that I did read, I think Clay Shirky raised some important points. Addressing Carr's claim that there will be (and already has been) some cultural sacrifices that have been made with the changing "media landscape," Shirky writes:

...the question we need to be asking isn’t whether there is sacrifice; sacrifice is inevitable with serious change. The question we need to be asking is whether the sacrifice is worth it or, more importantly, what we can do to help make the sacrifice worth it. And the one strategy pretty much guaranteed not to improve anything is hoping that we’ll somehow turn the clock back. This will fail, while neither resuscitating the past nor improving the future.

While I appreciate a lot of what Carr has said about the internet's overall effect on the way we think and read, I do think that he approaches the subject from a certain kind of golden-age orientation (not unlike Postman), which ignores the fact that change has already happened and there isn't any going back. At this point the only hope that Carr has is to attempt to subvert the medium and use it to encourage "deep reading" (which has been done to some respect with long-form, online journalism).

Interestingly, I tried to follow a link to something Andrew Sullivan (easily my favorite journalist) had written on the subject and found this page. Sadly it seems that this "news wall" has fully embraced the pond-skater format and uses visuals to attract and direct viewers (and not necessarily readers), to important stories. There does seem to be some disconnect between a visual index and a typical news story.

In the end I was able to find a quote from Sullivan on the subject that I think takes a moderate approach to the issue that would be worth exploring:

“...are you still reading this, or are you about to click on another link?...We need to be both pond-skaters and scuba divers. We need to master the ability to access facts while reserving time and space to do something meaningful with them.”