On May 10, 2011, at 1:34 PM, SA wrote:
> On 5/10/2011 12:05 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> It's the Internet. No one wants to read a book anymore. Everyone wants a one- to three-sentence talking point.
>
> There's nothing new about that. The age-old definition of a grad student is someone who can argue about a book he or she hasn't read. And it's not just grad students. If academic scholars only knew what they read in actual books (as opposed to reviews, summaries, historiographical essays, etc.), they would know a lot less.
>
> I've always had a strong instinctive feeling that when someone responds to an argument by citing some book that supposedly proves the argument wrong, they have a discursive obligation to summarize the book. Otherwise it's the intellectual equivalent of having a girlfriend in Canada.
Is that an anti-Canadian remark?
We've been over this before, but yes, that's a long-standing tendency, but I'm certain the Internet has made it worse. Nick Carr cites oodles of studies on what it's done to our thinking habits.