I fundamentally disagree with the author, and yet agree with him at the same time. I don't have MPD, but he makes two different points.
On the one hand: no, my life would be considerably less richer if I did not pay attention to the world around me. This includes knowing who the President is and understanding why that matters, particularly in the case of the US's first black President. I grew up in Texas, and it matters to me to know that he and my father (or his predecessor) would not have even been allowed to attend school together. Regardless of one's political affiliation or outlook, the issues at that level matter, and our opinion matters. To 'embrace embraced not knowing anything about current events and the world at large' is willful ignorance, and that's a value I find distasteful.
That said: of course one should manage one's intake of information. Of course one should counterbalance that with productivity. Of course one should be a source of value and not merely a sink for the news-as-entertainment complex that has gripped our society. RSS and other technologies should enable us to get control of those things for ourselves rather than watch Walter Cronkite for half an hour every night along with the rest of the nation and then go off and do whatever the party bosses say.
I agree with the problem, but the proposed solution makes things worse. Education - formal and informal - has value in making better citizens of all nations.
I think the situation is similar to how it is easier for a cheap product to add features than it is for a luxury product to become cheaper.
Or put another way: It is wiser and easier to start from zero and add the valuable things than it is to start with everything and remove everything that is not valuable.
Thinking back on my first year of university is painful. I wasted simply too much time 'browsing' the Internet. Every free hour I had I tried to plug myself in and enter zombie mode. I told myself that there wasn't enough time to be productive and that the day was too short. All while spending hours a day looking at cat pictures for one or two laughs an hour. With that in mind I would encourage anyone reading to self evaluate.
Going cold turkey is hard. Once you remove random Internet browsing you'll find that the day is actually quite long. I would suggest having a project to throw your new found free time into.
"I grew up in Texas, and it matters to me to know that he and my father (or his predecessor) would not have even been allowed to attend school together."
Brown v. Board was in 1954. Obama didn't start school until 1967.
You may want to look into the school segregation lawsuits of the 70s, not to mention much of the civil rights movement of the 60s with a particular focus on education. The Supreme Court decision didn't automatically mean integrated schools, which is why my daughter (in an inner-ring suburb of Dallas) attends a magnet school created as part of our desegregation court order. Come to think of it, so did I (though it's, erm, been a while).
"You may want to look into the school segregation lawsuits of the 70s"
I'm quite familiar with the subject, thanks.
Those lawsuits dealt with de facto segregation based on neighborhoods, not de jure segregation based on race. It had a similar effect on the large scale, hence the lawsuits, but that doesn't mean that Obama himself wouldn't have been allowed to attend. Obama didn't live in the 'hood. His grandparents, with whom he lived in Hawaii, were white and well-to-do, and he attended an expensive private school (current tuition: $18,450/year, not including fees).
really interesting perspective, I hadn't thought about it from the perspective of "richness of life"
I guess my rebuttal would be that the news i was reading didn't make my life any richer. it's all so pandoring that it's intentionally not rich, I think.
On the one hand: no, my life would be considerably less richer if I did not pay attention to the world around me. This includes knowing who the President is and understanding why that matters, particularly in the case of the US's first black President. I grew up in Texas, and it matters to me to know that he and my father (or his predecessor) would not have even been allowed to attend school together. Regardless of one's political affiliation or outlook, the issues at that level matter, and our opinion matters. To 'embrace embraced not knowing anything about current events and the world at large' is willful ignorance, and that's a value I find distasteful.
That said: of course one should manage one's intake of information. Of course one should counterbalance that with productivity. Of course one should be a source of value and not merely a sink for the news-as-entertainment complex that has gripped our society. RSS and other technologies should enable us to get control of those things for ourselves rather than watch Walter Cronkite for half an hour every night along with the rest of the nation and then go off and do whatever the party bosses say.
I agree with the problem, but the proposed solution makes things worse. Education - formal and informal - has value in making better citizens of all nations.