| Title | : | The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0253336341 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780253336347 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published August 1, 1999 |
"If the world of constant, instantaenous communication makes you a little nervous from time to time, David Shenk can explain why. This book is a very useful antidote to the endless praise lavished on the new electronic mediums. Read it slowly!" ―BILL McKIBBEN, author, THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION
In this provocative collection of essays, David Shenk expands his enlightened skepticism to include thoughts on the dangers of online journalism, the ethical implications of digital photography, and the misguided hopes for computers in the classroom. Shock-jocks, computerized toys, Microsoft-bashing, and genetic testing are all subject to his incisive and discerning criticism.
Is Shenk just another neo-Luddite determined to bash all things digital? Hardly. This self-described technology enthusiast―and avid fan of the Internet―is simply interested in clear-eyed analysis of how machines we use actually affect our lives. As one of the founders of the Technorealism movement, he insists that new technologies must be appraised for their ability to achieve traditional human ends, rather than embraced merely for novelty's sake. The End of Patience includes vignettes from Shenk's conversations with some of the most provocative technology thinkers of our time, including Mitch Kapor, Steven Johnson, Esther Dyson, Douglas Rushkoff and Steve Silberman.
The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution Reviews
-
While Shenk's "cautionary notes" err on the side of the measured critiques of a turn-of-the-century technological participant-observer, this book's potential value as a bellwether of, for instance, conscientious information consumption is completely undermined by the braying topicality of the project. Because these articles were largely written as either pointed and timely inquiries into the social value of very particular and short-lived services (e.g. Pointcast), or as more diffuse, exploratory works on the ethical considerations underlying the adoption of certain technological advancements (e.g. cloning and the Human Genome Project), they betray their age rather poorly.
Shenk here sits atop the comfortable perch of a guarded cum unassailable optimism that comes packaged as some sort of "objective" or "realist" cynicism about the progress/efficiency narrative of the Web age. The author and his contemporaries coin their approach "technorealism", which can often be reduced to sloganeering about cost/benefit games and "faster not being better". Very fine and good, but this collection is all too piecemeal to accumulate the needed momentum to allow such obvious umbrellas to hold fast. Shenk even pads the page count with excerpts of email communications with his friends! Not to mention the articles about photojournalism and Photoshop or ticker news feeds and personalized homepages that seem downright, naively folksy ten years down the line.
The one excellent piece herein about the marriage between Biotech and University laboratory science does not a book make. (There's also some merit to "Stealing Calm", a paean to radio in our soundbite-happy times). There are better book-length arguments regarding the matters of import here (see Fukuyama's "Our Post-Human Future" on cloning, or any Neil Postman for heartier humanism). Is it a coincidence that writers of the mid-20th Century like Jacques Ellul (The Technological Society) or Orwell wrote more convincingly on our current socio-technological dilemmas? Their isolation from the modern ubiquities of information technology allowed for the kind of thinking we don't seem capable of as we're strapped in for the ride. No disrespect to Shenk, but this sort of journalism should really just hit the microfiche. ...Google books, that is! -
An enthralling read on the pitfalls of information technology and the speeding up of data / technology / society. It is a collection of essays and correspondence from the late 90s, yet much of it is relevant today. The phenomena Shenk describes have only accelerated in the past decade, and we are feeling the effects, including shorter attention spans and the devolution of any sort of robust media channels. This book has me seriously reconsidering the role technology plays in my life.
-
This book is positively quaint in reminding us of the 90's, when it seemed like a rational and skeptical view of mediatech was possible. Pretty much everything David Shenk worried about in "Datasmog" and commented on in this follow-up has come to pass. And it's much worse than he imagined. At least Orwell is happy that someone is taking up his banner, but Big Brother seems to have won.
