Welcome Strangers

I.

using the Olympics as a billion-dollar research lab
to get a sense of how people are
different media platforms
giving advertisers a clearer picture of
paying attention to the games
provides a comprehensive picture of how people are
supplementing TV viewership

it wants to learn of their use of tools
using about 10 methods for measuring the audience
reams of Olympics data, blogging

using different media platforms
running different focus groups
the whole idea is to get the same person and to touch them
across all different sorts of platforms

gleans isn't yet currency, meaning
it won't be recognized

it may eventually be used for all programming going forward

II.

cloud computing initiative
plans to acquire wireless spectrum
who deserves to get the biggest slice
of the new wireless broadband spectrum
to address tactics in the pitched battle

there's no escaping the Googleplex

III.

remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory

my mind isn’t going

my mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns

I get fidgety, lose the thread

I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back

I think I know what’s going on

searching and surfing and sometimes adding

to the great databases

reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines

and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts

they propel you toward them

media are not just passive channels of information

they supply the stuff of thought

they also shape the process of thought

once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words

I’m just seeking convenience

a “staccato” quality, reflecting

anecdotes alone don’t prove much

“a form of skimming activity,” hopping

as users “power browse” horizontally

and abstracts going for quick wins

sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter

a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball

using only the tips of his fingers

words could once again flow from his mind to the page

even tighter, more telegraphic

even the adult mind is very plastic

thanks to our brain’s plasticity

the adaptation occurs also at a biological level

the result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration

reprogramming us

the Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure

“In the past the man has been first,” he declared

“in the future the system must be first”

the Internet is a machine

designed for the efficient and automated collection

transmission, and manipulation

of information

it is striving to systematize everything

the terabytes of behavioral data

it carries out thousands of experiments a day

it uses the results to refine the algorithms

the work of the mind

information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource

that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency

if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain

or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain

you’d be better off
_________

The Associated Press, July 7, 2008
Josh McHugh, Portfolio.Com
Atlantic Monthly - Nicholas Carr