Pirkka’s posterous

International concern for the minority who can’t read may soon extend to those who can’t publish. Reading—a defining characteristic of civilization as far back as ancient Greece when all Athenian citizens were expected to know how to read—is now taken for granted in industrialized democracies. Publishing by the few Athenian authors brought us drama, philosophy, science, mathematics, literature, and history. As readers, we consume. As authors, we create. Our society is changing from consumers to creators.

Many professionals have been worried about this development. Where's the quality, they are asking. Language will detoriarate, just see all the internet writing.

I don't think the question is really about quality. Content and meaning will be valued, and what will valued is decided by many more people than before. It has to be a good thing.

But at the same time I feel that publishing is taking responsibility for what you write, and that is something the creator turned consumers haven't all really understood, yet.

You may write bad English (touché) and publish poorly constructed texts, but the real question is do you stand for what you publish?

Recently, I have been thinking about how our food consumption and information consumption habits actually closely resemble each other. Just as food is the energy source for our bodies, information is the energy source for our minds. Our body’s health is heavily influenced by the quality of our nutritional habits. Consuming foods high in fat, sugar, and other unhealthy elements can lead to a variety of health problems, causing a deterioration of one’s quality of life. Similarly, if we have a poor information diet (i.e. consistently watching reality TV and internet meme videos), our mind’s performance, clarity, and ability to achieve goals can be severely negatively impacted. Although network TV and comedic YouTube videos are fun, they can also be addicting like a sweet sugary snack. Consume too many of these snacks and you will soon find yourself gasping at the scale in disbelief. However, the rate and ease of access to these sugary information snacks has only increased in recent years.

Snack size of information does indeed work pretty much like candies or fast food: you get some fast energy, but then again, there's soon plenty to burn in your waistline.

I'm working constantly both on my real and my information waistline.

Social media detox is a thing a few friends of mine have talked about lately. Rushing to yoga class after hectic work hours to clear your mind isn't enough, one needs to cut down on information too.

We cherish the number of followers and friends - the more the better - but how long will it take for quality to become more important?

I don't need hunderds of daily tweets. Even one that makes me really think should be enough.

Pienessä ajassa neiti X:n yksityiskohtainen kertomus valloitti maailman FB-käyttäjien seinät – myös minun. Käyttäjät kohisivat: voiko joku olla niin tyhmä, ettei ymmärrä, miten yksityisiä viestejä lähetetään Facebookissa.

Ihmisiä on helppo leimata tyhmäksi ja idiootiksi. Entäs jos seuraavalla kerralla ennen tyhmyydenjulistusta vastaisit kahteen kysymykseen:

Miten neiti X olisi voinut tietää oikean FB-käyttäytymismallin?
Miten itse opit, ettei FB:ssä kannata laittaa ihan mitä tahansa viestejä toisten seinille?

Kaikki, mitä itse pidämme itseselvyytenä, on kuitenkin opittua.

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

I came across this old Washington Post piece on world famous violinist Joshua Bell. It's been couple of years since I read this fascinating story for the first time, and this time it still made me think.

We buy expensive tickets to see Joshua Bell, but still very few stop by to listen him playing when he does it for free.

Maybe people just don't enjoy classical music, or they were in such a hurry as always. Maybe seeing a guy with jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap just doesn't fit your image of a real violin player. Besides, the setting was also all wrong.

So we just pass a great musical experience because the reality doesn't match our presumption of how this kind of music should be presented.

I think we are every now and then too obsessed with the way thinks look and how they are presented to us, especially when we are talking about new ideas.

If the whole package doesn't fit into our own presumption, we just easily discard it. We don't even spend a small moment really thinking about the idea, which might actually be the best ever. It just doesn't look like that!

We allow the first impression to deceive us, which is rather natural, but is it something we should fight against? Should we before discarding something really think if the idea is actually good, but it just needs improving?

By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil.

Such sentiments, in the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that's been displaced.

So Plato opposed writing, because it makes us dumber, "no need to remember things." Thoreau didn't like telegraph, because the speed doesn't actually help as people don't really have anything to say to each other. Morse disliked telephone as the discussions just vanish into air.

What I find fascinating is that this same story of new forms of communication melting our brain continues all the time, in bigger and smaller circles. Just think about internet: the same thinking applies here.

Blogs melt our brains, because all they offer is uninformated opinions that we can't separate from so called facts. This is the story that proud Luddites also known as journalists love to tell us.

Facebook really makes us all dumb. Even the most avid bloggers opposed (and some still do) this social networking site, as it only allows very shallow communication. What is point of telling other what you are doing right at this moment? It's unnecessary information that just adds up to information clutter.

Microblogging must be the worst brain melter of all. Short messages and constant sharing of links is pseudo communication, not adding up to anything nor even really building network! Total waste of time!

I can easily find both the Luddite and front-row admirer of new technology in me.

When opposing something new and thinking myself that it melts our brains, maybe I'm just scared because I don't get the fascination of it. I just fear that everyone else is getting smarter!

Thanks to @raesmaa for reading tip!