Download issue (PDF) - Nieman Foundation - Harvard University

What’s Next for News?MIT professor Sherry Turkle finds the prevalence of PowerPoint in grade school classrooms “distressing,” yet PowerPoint is ubiquitous. Ithas gained adherents in the federal Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who use it to brief military commanders.unnecessarily long and boring, andthe stuff that’s great you could fitin a couple of hands, and that’s thestuff they should really commit toand memorize and study. The rest ofit is better short and quick and to thepoint. Look at haiku. It’s much harderto do something quickly than it is todo something for hours. And who’s tosay that it’s better to take your timeand not be distracted?Turkle: The ability to trace complicatedthemes through a literary work,through a poem, through a play—thesepleasures will be lost to us because theybecome pleasures through acquiredskills. You need to learn how to listento a poem, read a [Fyodor] Dostoevskynovel, read a Jane Austen novel. Theseare pleasures of reading that demandattention to things that are long andwoven and complicated. And this issomething that human beings havecherished and that have broughttremendous riches. And to just say,“Well, we’re of a generation that nowlikes it short and sweet and haiku.Why? Just because the technologymakes it easy for us to have thingsthat are short and sweet and haiku.”In other words, it’s an argument aboutsensibility and aesthetics that’s drivenby what technology wants.I don’t really care what technologywants. It’s up to people to developtechnologies, see what affordancesthe technology has. Very often theseaffordances tap into our vulnerabilities.I would feel bereft if, because technologywants us to read short, simplestories, we bequeath to our childrena world of short, simple stories. Whattechnology makes easy is not alwayswhat nurtures the human spirit.I’ve been an MIT professor for 30years; I’ve seen the losses. There’s noone who’s been teaching for 25 yearsand doesn’t think that our studentsaren’t different now than they werethen. They need to be stimulatedin ways that they didn’t need to bestimulated before. No, that’s notgood. You want them to think abouthard things. You want them to thinkabout complicated things. When youhave the ability to easily do showy,fabulous things, you want to believethey’re valuable because that would begreat. I think that we always have to22 Nieman Reports | Summer 2010