Occasional Musings

Reading in Digital Age

Recently there was an article from Nicholas Carr titled “Is Google Making us Stupid?” and there was much debate and arguments about it, which I am sure it can be googled very easily 🙂

But the following article I found quite interesting. Especially about contemplative thought vs analytical thought.  Here is an interesting snippet.

“…This starts me wondering about the difference between contemplative and analytic thought. The former is intransitive and experiential in its nature, is for itself; the latter is transitive, is goal directed. According to the logic of transitive thought, information is a means, its increments mainly building blocks toward some synthesis or explanation. In that thought-world it’s clearly desirable to have a powerful machine that can gather and sort material in order to isolate the needed facts. But in the other, the contemplative thought-world—where reflection is itself the end, a means of testing and refining the relation to the world, a way of pursuing connection toward more affectively satisfying kinds of illumination, or insight—information is nothing without its contexts. I come to think that contemplation and analysis are not merely two kinds of thinking: they are opposed kinds of thinking. Then I realize that the Internet and the novel are opposites as well….”

More about this here: [The Link]