culture

All that is evil, it is good for young people
by Philippe Godard

Some reflections on the future of the book, especially for young people.

 

In the world, the book is concerned by the spread of digital technologies. In France, the one aspect which is discussed in depth is that of copyright, because our country is at the forefront in fighting the hydra of Oltreatlantico who proceeds to beat spur the digitization of our written heritage. Yet questions about the digital book and the remuneration of the authors are not so important ... but lets forget challenge under the decision to discuss the essentials. Of course, in the capitalist world, would be ridiculous to ignore the fact that publishing is a sector of the economy (if not, is atheism), and, as such, must produce a profit, so that publishers and authors must be able to live . However, it is doubtful that the situation is so dramatic that we are forced to publishing on paper right now, as some urge us to do, to abandon it to its fate, throw ethics to the winds and thrown onto the lifeboat digital groped to save the skin.

Technologies of the left and right

The question of technological revolutions that disrupt the way of reading, to culture or to learn is not new, but it does not justify the policy of the ostrich. Let us, therefore, the fundamental question for the future: the digital divide is not primarily a generational divide? And at that level must be analyzed to think about the evolution of the culture of the book? The children do not read more like their parents do not fill their days in the same way the latter, because, as shown by all studies, all over the world are glued to their monitor. Hannah Arendt, in The crisis of culture, already put this rupture between generations in unexpected ways and often we have forgotten. Arendt argues that the child needs to be protected "so that the world can destroy it. But this world needs a protection that prevents him from being devastated and destroyed by the wave of newcomers, which spreads over him with each new generation "(The Crisis in Education).
While new technologies, quickly assimilated by the younger generation of digital natives, adults who do not appear to threaten the master's thesis Arendt may directly result in a political conservative, characterized by a reactionary technophobia. Since this position technophobia is simple, if not simplistic, it is not surprising to find him in different policy areas, ranging from some sectors of the extreme left, represented for example by John Zerzan, singer of "primitive future", up to a part of right and extreme right Petain, through thinkers such as Paul Virilio, who always boasts a nostalgic place in the world that preceded the cyberworld, which has reduced the planet in order to prevent any non-technological adventure.
Such technophobia found mainly in the primary demographic category comprises "old", which is of some importance: older people have reason to complain, they do not understand anything in the world today and in particular the Internet.
Keep in mind that previous generations could still communicate with each other, because technological change was not happening at a pace so frenetic. These days, if the grandparents want to communicate with their grandchildren, they have a single solution: the computer. It ended the era of handwritten letters! Not only that, it is also necessary to have compatible software, because now the mad rush of globalized capitalism condemns generations of computers, such as motor vehicles or appliances, an almost instant obsolescence. As Gunther Anders argued since 1956 in a text that provides many keys to understanding our present, we are witnessing the obsolescence of man.
The technophobes reactionaries are right on one point, which nobody can dispute: the rapid renewal of technology has brought in a few years before the famous digital divide. UNESCO worried about it already in his report on the company sharing of knowledge published in 2005: this is not the time of Methuselah, and yet, five years later, we have forgotten this essential fact. Well, the digital divide, rather than decrease, increase, not only between countries and countries closely linked with little or no connection, but also, within all countries, including individuals connected and unconnected individuals. Whether we like it or not, and it matters little that only the reactionaries to defend this position, the rapid obsolescence of technologies consecrated by our social norms leads to the fact that certain individuals or entire groups can no longer keep pace. Which leads to a real division between social classes, age groups, including connected and disconnected, which can lead to a dissolution of the society, which perhaps is already happening.
The reflections that follow are proposed from a viewpoint different from that of conservative technophobes, but does not come in conflict with the criticisms made by Arendt, Anders or Lewis Mumford in The Myth of the Machine1(1) Translated into Italian under the title Il mito della macchina, il Saggiatore, Milano 1969.
And, to quote an author much more recently, by Nicholas Carr in The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, published in 2010 (title can be translated as "TLa superficialità. Ciò che Internet fa ai nostri cervelli"). These critics attack technology in the name of a process of emancipation of mankind, and not on behalf of an idealized past.

McLuhan: the return

Many things can be criticized on the Internet: the mainstreaming of cataloging e-mail and blogs by States, commercial enterprises and social networks, the lack of reliable data which are now published by any person and the failure of the so-called social Web, of which Internet users have grabbed only to satisfy their narcissism exacerbated and the important place of pornography, of which we had already had an idea in earlier versions ... Criticize the Internet is easy, too easy! This allows you to divert attention from the earlier forms of information and communication, that perhaps could be, too, the subject of criticism?
That's right: the paper publishing, which somehow represents the old world before the inroads of the new generation speaks of Arendt, has undergone a positive evolution. Firstly because the publisher did not provide fully what was going on. It is true, however, that this is a rather new phenomenon in this sector: competition does not come from another medium, in the sense of a different system for disseminating that information. After all, radio and television broadcast entertainment or text, the contents of which imitate more or less than those published on paper. With the Internet, these technological tools that attack the old media: everyone, not just the book, but also radio and television are under threat - and the role of content in order of success is much less decisive than the radio or television.
This suggests that the Internet has nothing to do with all those dusty media. Yet it is amusing and amazing that the enthusiastic technophiles endlessly repeat the refrain in all their articles, studies, programs and even books (the last straw!): The culture of the Internet is already replacing that of the book, but need of books, radio and television to let us know!
Fifteen years was to be expected and announced what is happening today! In reality, unfortunately, and check the validity of the intuition of McLuhan: the medium is the message. And we check in the worst way.
One of the key challenges posed by digital book in the humanities and the wise for young or encyclopedias (but these are almost all gone), is the acceleration of the time. Internet time, which is of the order of instantaneousness, involves a very rapid obsolescence of information data. For this reason, the work paper is somewhat outdated before being printed ... It is depressing, though this is not true for a large part of the documentation, or never true, but this pop, this is a cult instantaneousness substantial advantage of sites such as Wikipedia. Therefore, we must conduct a struggle around the reliability of the data, of which Wikipedia is not the best example ... To destroy the myth of the collective brain brought on by this encyclopedia, you will need a great effort, which will ensure that the publishing classic quotes go back. The Web is not reliable, but we prefer to works on paper because the immediacy and responsiveness, and reliability, there appear to be the true values of our world. Now to know does not mean more to understand, analyze, take time to think it means to know what happens at that time or read a digest of the last work of fashion. Or rather, is not even know this ...
The immediacy is not the only bonus given by the digital culture. Its other special prerogative is the unprecedented build-up, thanks to that wonderful instrument that is the search engine, of information (true and false), that build on each other at a dizzying pace. If the book or the work of humanities documentary for young people are threatened, not so much because of their content when the infinite extension of Web pages available to us from their direct competitor, which, again, is not a site or a mega-base of data, but a set of tools: the architecture of the Web and search engines. So, ultimately, to know becomes the equivalent of knowing where to find what you're looking for ...
It is especially here that McLuhan was a visionary. The most serious tests, conducted since 1989 (!) By the followers of the Internet mainly at American universities, show that surfing the Internet and reading on a monitor with its intertextual connections and its media, does not operate the same areas of brain reading "quietly" on paper. Well, read the paper much more favorable memory and reading comprehension on the monitor. The latter, more or less often disturbed by external factors to what you are reading, is less concentrated, more chaotic, to the point, say the scientists, to disturb greatly understand and remember, and if you have a daily attendance of monitor, even your ability to concentrate, as explained by the excellent work of Carr. As one vice president HarperStudio, "e-books are not simply printed books electronically. We must take advantage of the medium and create something dynamic, which improves the experience. I want connections, and behind the scenes, bonus and the narrative and video of the conversation. " What counts is not the message for these vendors and readers tablets, just import the container, the middle.
This is fundamental to everything related to pedagogy, and implies that the digital textbooks, which provide around a room called the "interactive", are all bad. The medium is the exact message: it conditions us to accept only a certain type of information, not content matter, because we can no longer really connect to each other, build self-reasoning nor can we think of ourselves as social animals that interact with each other. This is the exact location of the digital divide - the other digital divide, the density of connections, is but a pale reflection: it shows the societies in which the relationship between human beings are mainly mediated through images, and these reified society so highly are those who call themselves the most developed. This indicates an interesting contradiction in this world, where "think" they will not leave the world most technological advanced... Who will win: technology or business? The fight is just beginning.

Is there still a place for human beings?

Internet presents itself as an extraordinary accumulation of different information, personal, community, political or journalistic, or encyclopedic theory, all accessible on the Web - in every case that the "Web Expert" is the deep Web, Web of the deep Anglo-Web "invisible" as we say, unreachable by search engines. This accumulation of information is not equivalent to what we commonly call knowledge, whose goal is the emancipation of individuals. The network promotes the accumulation, but not the construction of a critical knowledge. We are the pawns in a Trivial Pursuit.
Such ease of storage and access has a fundamental implication: the role of the human brain is altered by digital technology and computer memory becomes in danger of becoming just a matter of neurons and synapses. What is the place of the machine than man? This ethical question, not discussed here, leads to a political dilemma: where will be located in a free society that will inform and communicate only via the Internet?
In quantitative terms, about what the speed of execution, the human being is no match for Computing Machinery. Hence a new problem, this time publishing: the face of competition instantaneousness, the role of the book can not be to provide the most recent data and more numerous than those of the Internet, because the battle is lost in advance. But it can provide more, more reliable. Sure, but who will be able to recognize the reliability in a society which, as we have seen, emphasizes other criteria? The application requires a realistic answer.
As for the books for young people, particularly the books of documents, their role has never been limited in the good publishers, to provide reliable information. The books are especially designed for young people to make the reader think, to give him the tools of his freedom. And it is precisely what the Internet does not provide, or provides a far less accessible than the book. Internet, blogs, forums, social and even above the encyclopedias provide tools to consume, to accept the world as it is. Of course on the internet you can also find subversive thoughts and uncomfortable information, but they are drowned in a welter of information surfaced from the depths thanks to their favorable page rank, which has nothing to do with the quality and reliability. In addition, a large part of the most attractive part of the invisible Web.

A new role of publishing for young people?

Nevertheless, the digital society is not a break in the evolution towards a fearful and aggressive individualism, is placed in the continuity of a process rather than rooted in contemporary society: individualization and social disintegration. The idea of emancipation and the works are dedicated to spreading down or endangered. But this does not disturb anyone, the condition of latent violence of our society is content with the self-imposed curfew, due to the Internet and television. All home from eight in the morning at dawn! In those hours, all power rests with the screens!
We verify the correctness of one of the most famous Marxist theory: the dominant culture is the culture of the ruling class. So that we can complete today's digital cultural tools proposed by the ruling class are instruments of domination. This is demonstrated by the digital divide or the quality of the Web to pay respect to the social Web.
All that is bad is good for the young! They are young people who gorge on food poisoning, too sweet, too fatty, too salty. They are living at the center of the monitor, the monitors of their mobile phone, computer, video games and television, which is not even the most familiar, because the family has become a hotel, with TVs in all rooms. I'm still young which some poor editor, who loves old stuff and primitive dictionaries, wants to sell his poor production. And here is announced the arrival of e-book!
The culture of the monitor, you may say, is not a disaster: What is certain is that humanity has experienced far worse tragedies, and at times still very recent. However, it is a form of culture that is attached to being replaced solely by vacuum, vacuum and even worse: an anti-emancipation brew. And they are our children to be affected. As Arendt suggested, the world is protected, but the new generations becoming a brute, and this had never happened before at this level, except in totalitarian regimes. Democracy, in the global era, is changing course, just when it seems totally incapable of managing complex global problems that are creating?
As Mariann Wolfe says, U.S. university professor who studies how to read, "We are not only what we read. We are as we read. " In this area, publishers specialize in books for young people have an important role to play, with the other actors involved in the book chain: authors, book sellers and brokers of all types (except for dealers who only care about their income, and because the content is less important than containers is crucial for their appearance).
The 'objective' elites that push their children to study, so they are primarily teachers (half of the students of the Polytechnic have at least one parent teacher!) And all adults concerned about the future, will continue to be interested in the paper, especially since, as demonstrated by the neurologists, the paper activates the same brain areas of the monitor. Now, the areas "map" of the brain are the areas where they are used every day, almost always guarantee a favorable social conditions. Anything that allows young people to form a critical part in this world to the struggle for the emancipation of humanity. Of course, the documentary texts youth are only a small part of this terrain of struggle, but we have no right to abandon it.
So are books for the elite? Today the answer is yes. Although this is very annoying, the current situation is summed up in: everything bad is good for young people, except, of course, the elite, who realizes the immense waste of human and profiting. One solution is to write, publish books and suggest that they may arouse the suspicion that young people still read and that does not confuse their desire to become the oppression elite, but to participate in the struggle for emancipation. The idea is not new. Matters little in a situation like ours is one of the few tools to take the offensive against a system that stifles us and we do not want to save.