That New Yorker magazine image of a fist-pumping Barack Obama has hijacked criticism of a more dubious cover on a highbrow U.S. magazine.
The July-August issue of The Atlantic carries a provocative cover line, in a font that duplicates one of the world's most recognizable logos, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?"
When the issue landed in my mailbox -- yes, I still subscribe to magazines on paper, and more about that in a minute -- I was immediately intrigued.
Google is my computer home page. I use the search engine 10 or 20 times a day for something or other.
In the process, I have developed my own theories and insecurities about excessive Googling (no hair on my palms yet!), but this Atlantic article manages to miss most of them.
Writer Nicholas Carr's actual beef is not with Google itself, but with the Internet in general.
He argues that the sheer ubiquity of information, and the ease with which we surf online from topic to topic, from article to article, from sound file to video clip, is rewiring our brain's neural circuitry.
"The deep reading that used to come naturally," he writes, "has become a struggle."
Carr should be annoyed at his Atlantic editors for misrepresenting his argument. The tiny subhead, "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains," is a more accurate reflection of what he's on about.
But, still, he's wrong. Information overload likely is not a serious issue for normal people, but more for mile-wide-and-inch-deep types, like columnists and editors, who feel obliged to keep their heads above a sea of online data and then write articles about their pain.
If you have a special interest, or a narrow specialty, the Internet is a godsend. It gives you access to sources a world away in the click of a mouse.
You only have look at public library usage stats to see that reading (well, maybe not of the deepest of books) is more popular than ever.
Mind you, reference books may be going the way of the dodo. The Internet provides digital access to facts we once looked for in books and dusty newspaper morgues.
This is where I have my issues with Google. To do my job, I used to have to know some things and remember others. It was just too much trouble to dig through old clippings.
What year did ballerina Evelyn Hart win a gold medal in that Varna dance competition? Was that in Bulgaria, or in Hungary?
Who starred opposite Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? What years did Bramwell Tovey conduct the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra?
I swear, as recently as a decade ago, I had these facts (and at least six more) stored somewhere in the grey folds of my hippocampus, and I could retrieve them at will.
Now my brain is Steven Pinker's blank slate. I know nothing for sure. And I remember just one thing: How to find www.google.ca in my "favourites" list.
That said, as much as I while away hours Googling for lost facts and music videos on Youtube, I still love my magazines.
They are my one indulgence in a life of monk-like austerity. Every day I look forward to their coming in the mail, even though I believe that Canada Post's daily mail service -- surely for residential customers -- is a holdover from a pre-digital era.
Electronic delivery is not going away. Myself, I will switch to digital magazines, and digital books, too, when e-readers replace paper, as they certainly will do, though perhaps not while I am breathing.
A few weeks ago, after reading the Atlantic piece, I mentioned to my editor that my view of Google was rosier. The next day he sent me a link to a story in the Kansas City Star by the paper's books editor, who had also read the article.
The guy decided to go a week without Google and document the experience.
I'll save you the time. It was a good idea but not a great piece. (He lasted three days). Still, I thought I might want to refer to it before writing this.
But I couldn't find the link in my inbox, in my delete box, or anywhere. Maybe it wasn't my editor who sent it me. Who can remember these things?
So I tried Google. I typed "kansas city star google."
Bingo. There it was, top of search.
That's how I know the guy lasted only three days. I hadn't remembered that either. How did we function without Google?
morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca
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