Jonathan Franzen gave a commencement address at Kenyon College a few days ago and the New York Times published part of it in the newspaper. Many of us operate in a constant whirl of cheap information and to read Franzen's words is to be smacked in the face, reminded of it. It's also to be reminded of what education can be, what wisdom is, what matters. Some don't need these reminders and others sorely do. Either way, the Kenyon graduates got one heck of a speech.
Criticism of smart phone ubiquity, social media, Facebook and Twitter and blogs and all the rest is often pegged ?tiresome? or ?ranting,? and for some of it, the bad and boring stuff, the adjectives are apt. But frequently they are merely shields, defending those who deploy them against the eventuality of having to address or at least consider the evidence that hours spent tapping away at small screens and amassing 140-character zingers may be barren hours, hours wasted. Among Washington policy circles it is axiomatic that social media especially is a ?tool? used to disseminate information; every congressman has a Twitter account and every wonk a blog and everyone and their organization is on Facebook. This, we are told, is how information is attained now. But information is not the same as knowledge. Does anyone contend that the frenzy of digital updates and minute-by-minute commentary has made us wiser, better?
It's a self-promotional, self-re-inventional world, and even old people now understand the power and efficiency of harnessing the momentum, learning to operate an iPad, and picking a message and staying with it to ?brand? or make a name for oneself, or to revitalize a worn-out career. The appetite for info appetizers is endless; if you'll supply them steadily you'll have a similarly steady line of consumers waiting to lap them up. This is perhaps appropriate in the fantasy realms where those with the surname Kardashian float, keeping us apprised of their movements, what shoes they just bought and where they're going to dinner and who will be there. But is it appropriate for those who would shape education policy? I don't know.
Either way, it may not matter. Are we too far gone? Maybe. But progress need not mean an unrelenting rush toward technological saturation. Perhaps over the next several years ever more people will tire of the monotonous?frenzy and begin to turn off, unplug, breathe a bit, think more. One is glad that some among us?frequently artists, novelists, poets?remember that knowledge comes through determined labor and are willing to remind us of it.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow