Hedges vs Thompson

According to Chris Hedges, newspapers are on a fast decent. He says “We are under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the internet.[p1]” This, to me, opens a new way of thought that I have never considered. What if the internet is just making us lazy? All the articles we have read in this class support this view. Yes, our way of thinking may be changing, and the speaking level of our presidents may be on a slippery slope, but what if it’s not related to our level of intelligence at all?

Hedges’ use of the word ‘parasite’ is quite shocking, but in reality, this is what we are. We go a website, news websites in particular, with no intention of adding information to it or even commenting on it. We rarely if ever try to check the source and we take what we read as fact just because the readership of the news company is in the millions. Hedges’ brings up an interesting statistic (even though I don’t know what his source is) that states, basically, a reader of an actual newspaper spends seven-fold the amount of time reading it that does a reader of an online news source.

The view of Clive Thompson and his sources is remarkably different from that of the aforementioned. Thompson goes into more detail about the statement that we write more today than previous generations ever have. “Before the internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment.[p1]” Although this sounds great that we are writing a lot, I question the real value of the writing which we do. Facebook chats and Twitter updates rarely if ever teach us anything of value. They just give us insight to what our friends are feeling or doing or even the latest rumor.

There are clearly two views on which way the net is pushing our media. It is very hard for me to draw a conclusion because both of these articles give very convincing arguments that seem believable (and not sensationalist). If forced to draw a conclusion, I would state that the internet is, as I’ve said, changing the way we read and write. But unfortunately, it is also making us lazy.