Holden Caulfield returns in an unauthorised sequel by debut novelist.
by: Alison Flood
The last we saw of Holden Caulfield, he was in a mental hospital in California, reminiscing about the days he spent roaming New York City, watching his sister Phoebe ride a carousel. Now JD Salinger's much-loved teenage misanthrope is back, thanks to an unauthorised sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, which sees a 76-year-old "Mr C" flee a nursing home to journey again through the streets of New York.
"I open my eyes and, just like that, I'm awake," is the opening line of Swedish American writer John David California's 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, just out from tiny publisher Windupbird Publishing. "I suppose it's pretty damn early, but it must still be the middle of the night. It's so dark I can hardly see my goddamned hand in front of my face."
"Just like the first novel, he leaves, but this time he's not at a prep school, he's at a retirement home in upstate New York," said California. "It's pretty much like the first book in that he roams around the city, inside himself and his past. He's still Holden Caulfield, and has a particular view on things. He can be tired, and he's disappointed in the goddamn world. He's older and wiser in a sense, but in another sense he doesn't have all the answers."
JD Salinger himself, to whom the book is dedicated – "To ... the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life" – is also a character in the novel, battling with himself over what to do with the teenager who has gripped millions of readers from his very first words: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
The Salinger character in California's novel muses that Caulfield is "like a piece of paper upon which you have once started a story, and then locked in a box and buried deep in the ground. Now, 60 years later, you dig that same box up and continue the story from where the last sentence ended."
California said he was moved to write the book – his first - because he'd "always wondered what happened to [Caulfield] ... he deserves to have another life than just his 16 years". He'd tried, he added, to be "very respectful" to both Caulfield and Salinger's status as "American icons". "I thought about it and tried to handle it very delicately. I like the story and Holden and I wanted to keep it respectful."
The famously reclusive Salinger, who withdrew from public life in the 1950s, hasn't given permission for the sequel. "Maybe he will get upset, but I'm hoping he will be pleased," said California. "I'm not trying to lure him out of hiding – maybe he wants his privacy [but] it would be fun for me to hear what he thinks about this, and if he's pleased with the way I've portrayed Holden Caulfield and his future."
Salinger, however, has blocked all attempts to publish any of his writings not available before 1965, hindered would-be biographers, and kept his work out of Hollywood ever since the 1950 movie version of his short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, My Foolish Heart, was panned by the critics. Perhaps California shouldn't hold his breath for a fairytale ending.
From: The Guardian
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
A future librarian?
This question from Yahoo! Answers about the acceptability of running a library of banned books from a locker at his high school is making the rounds. If you haven't already done so, check out the original posting (and responses) here.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books
Print Books are Target of Pirates on the Web
by: Motoko Rich
Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”
Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”
This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.
For a while now, determined readers have been able to sniff out errant digital copies of titles as varied as the “Harry Potter” series and best sellers by Stephen King and John Grisham. But some publishers say the problem has ballooned in recent months as an expanding appetite for e-books has spawned a bumper crop of pirated editions on Web sites like Scribd and Wattpad, and on file-sharing services like RapidShare and MediaFire.
“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”
John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. Gary M. Rinck, general counsel, said that in the last month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles — five times more than a year ago — asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley’s books.
“It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates. “You knock one down and five more spring up.”
Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, which invite users to upload documents like college theses and self-published novels, have been the target of industry grumbling in recent weeks, as illegal reproductions of popular titles have turned up on them. Trip Adler, chief executive of Scribd, said it was his “gut feeling” that unauthorized editions represented only a small fraction of the site’s content.
Both sites say they immediately remove illegally posted books once notified of them. The companies have also installed filters to identify copyrighted work when it is uploaded. “We are working very hard to keep unauthorized content off the site,” Mr. Adler said.
Several publishers declined to comment on the issue, fearing the attention might inspire more theft. For now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world, when file-sharing services like Napster threatened to take down the whole industry.
Publishers and authors say they can learn from their peers in music, who alienated fans by using the courts aggressively to go after college students and Napster before it converted to a legitimate online store.
“If iTunes started three years earlier, I’m not sure how big Napster and the subsequent piratical environments would have been, because people would have been in the habit of legitimately purchasing at pricing that wasn’t considered pernicious,” said Richard Sarnoff, a chairman of Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer titles.
Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What’s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.
Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. And the growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.
An example of copyrighted material on Scribd recently included a digital version of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of fairy tales by J. K. Rowling. One commenter, posting as vicious-9690, wrote “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks.”
For some writers, tracking down illegal e-books is simply not worth it.
“The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”
Book sales are down significantly, and publishers say it is difficult to determine whether electronic piracy is denting sales. Some of the most frequently uploaded books, like the “Twilight” series, are also huge best sellers.
Some authors say they just want to protect the principle of compensating writers. “I don’t ask to get rich off this stuff,” said Harlan Ellison, an author and screenwriter. “I just ask to be paid.”
Nine years ago, Mr. Ellison sued Internet service providers for failing to stop a user from posting four of his stories to an online newsgroup. Since settling that suit, he has pursued more than 240 people who have posted his work to the Internet without permission. “If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump,” he said.
Others view digital piracy as a way for new readers to discover writers. Cory Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel “Little Brother” spent seven weeks on the New York Times children’s chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers.
“I really feel like my problem isn’t piracy,” Mr. Doctorow said. “It’s obscurity.”
From: the NYTimes
by: Motoko Rich
Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”
Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”
This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.
For a while now, determined readers have been able to sniff out errant digital copies of titles as varied as the “Harry Potter” series and best sellers by Stephen King and John Grisham. But some publishers say the problem has ballooned in recent months as an expanding appetite for e-books has spawned a bumper crop of pirated editions on Web sites like Scribd and Wattpad, and on file-sharing services like RapidShare and MediaFire.
“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”
John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. Gary M. Rinck, general counsel, said that in the last month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles — five times more than a year ago — asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley’s books.
“It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates. “You knock one down and five more spring up.”
Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, which invite users to upload documents like college theses and self-published novels, have been the target of industry grumbling in recent weeks, as illegal reproductions of popular titles have turned up on them. Trip Adler, chief executive of Scribd, said it was his “gut feeling” that unauthorized editions represented only a small fraction of the site’s content.
Both sites say they immediately remove illegally posted books once notified of them. The companies have also installed filters to identify copyrighted work when it is uploaded. “We are working very hard to keep unauthorized content off the site,” Mr. Adler said.
Several publishers declined to comment on the issue, fearing the attention might inspire more theft. For now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world, when file-sharing services like Napster threatened to take down the whole industry.
Publishers and authors say they can learn from their peers in music, who alienated fans by using the courts aggressively to go after college students and Napster before it converted to a legitimate online store.
“If iTunes started three years earlier, I’m not sure how big Napster and the subsequent piratical environments would have been, because people would have been in the habit of legitimately purchasing at pricing that wasn’t considered pernicious,” said Richard Sarnoff, a chairman of Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer titles.
Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What’s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.
Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. And the growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.
An example of copyrighted material on Scribd recently included a digital version of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of fairy tales by J. K. Rowling. One commenter, posting as vicious-9690, wrote “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks.”
For some writers, tracking down illegal e-books is simply not worth it.
“The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”
Book sales are down significantly, and publishers say it is difficult to determine whether electronic piracy is denting sales. Some of the most frequently uploaded books, like the “Twilight” series, are also huge best sellers.
Some authors say they just want to protect the principle of compensating writers. “I don’t ask to get rich off this stuff,” said Harlan Ellison, an author and screenwriter. “I just ask to be paid.”
Nine years ago, Mr. Ellison sued Internet service providers for failing to stop a user from posting four of his stories to an online newsgroup. Since settling that suit, he has pursued more than 240 people who have posted his work to the Internet without permission. “If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump,” he said.
Others view digital piracy as a way for new readers to discover writers. Cory Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel “Little Brother” spent seven weeks on the New York Times children’s chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers.
“I really feel like my problem isn’t piracy,” Mr. Doctorow said. “It’s obscurity.”
From: the NYTimes
Saturday, May 16, 2009
National Library says security concerns behind dust-up
National Library says security concerns behind dust-up
by: Robert Everett-Green
Canada's national library says that escalating security concerns prompted the expulsion from its Ottawa offices of researchers and editors working for the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (EMC).
In a written statement, a spokesman for Library and Archives Canada (LAC) said that EMC personnel had their access revoked this week due to the library's need to “assure an ever-increasing level of security” for collections and paid staff. EMC, which receives no financial support from LAC, has had an office in the library's Ottawa headquarters since the encyclopedia project began 30 years ago.
It means that EMC personnel, who have been updating the encyclopedia's online version since 2003, will no longer have direct, unencumbered access to LAC collections. As of Monday, they will have to make a written application to see materials in a public room, like anyone coming off the street.
EMC editor-in-chief James Marsh scoffed at the suggestion that his staff members are a security risk.
“I told [LAC]: If you need a deeper level of security, I'll gladly submit my people to the RCMP,” he said. “I don't think it speaks well of what a national library should be, that they can't support a national reference work like this.”
Marsh, whose Historica Foundation maintains the EMC, said that the encyclopedia was initially “created in the offices of the national library, in co-operation with them.” He said the “handshake agreement” EMC enjoyed with former LAC head, historian Ian Wilson, seemed to expire once Wilson was replaced three weeks ago by Daniel Caron, a career civil servant.
Caron, whose office said he was travelling this week, could not be reached for an interview.
Betty Nygaard King, an editor with EMC, said she expects that the encyclopedia's expulsion will slow its online revision work by 90 per cent. She also said that LAC stands to lose by the new arrangement, since all research materials gathered independently by EMC editors have customarily been deposited with LAC.
The EMC was published in two paper editions in both official languages before becoming an online publication. Marsh, whose foundation receives about half of its budget from the Department of Canadian Heritage, said that the EMC draws about 20 per cent of the 700,000 unique visitors to the Canadian Encyclopedia, into which it has been integrated.
From: The Globe and Mail
by: Robert Everett-Green
Canada's national library says that escalating security concerns prompted the expulsion from its Ottawa offices of researchers and editors working for the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (EMC).
In a written statement, a spokesman for Library and Archives Canada (LAC) said that EMC personnel had their access revoked this week due to the library's need to “assure an ever-increasing level of security” for collections and paid staff. EMC, which receives no financial support from LAC, has had an office in the library's Ottawa headquarters since the encyclopedia project began 30 years ago.
It means that EMC personnel, who have been updating the encyclopedia's online version since 2003, will no longer have direct, unencumbered access to LAC collections. As of Monday, they will have to make a written application to see materials in a public room, like anyone coming off the street.
EMC editor-in-chief James Marsh scoffed at the suggestion that his staff members are a security risk.
“I told [LAC]: If you need a deeper level of security, I'll gladly submit my people to the RCMP,” he said. “I don't think it speaks well of what a national library should be, that they can't support a national reference work like this.”
Marsh, whose Historica Foundation maintains the EMC, said that the encyclopedia was initially “created in the offices of the national library, in co-operation with them.” He said the “handshake agreement” EMC enjoyed with former LAC head, historian Ian Wilson, seemed to expire once Wilson was replaced three weeks ago by Daniel Caron, a career civil servant.
Caron, whose office said he was travelling this week, could not be reached for an interview.
Betty Nygaard King, an editor with EMC, said she expects that the encyclopedia's expulsion will slow its online revision work by 90 per cent. She also said that LAC stands to lose by the new arrangement, since all research materials gathered independently by EMC editors have customarily been deposited with LAC.
The EMC was published in two paper editions in both official languages before becoming an online publication. Marsh, whose foundation receives about half of its budget from the Department of Canadian Heritage, said that the EMC draws about 20 per cent of the 700,000 unique visitors to the Canadian Encyclopedia, into which it has been integrated.
From: The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
After 400 Years, Health and Safety Bans Stepladders from Historic Oxford Library...But Nobody Can Reach the Books
After 400 years, health and safety bans stepladders from historic Oxford library... but nobody can reach the booksby: Lizzie Smith
Stepladders have been banned from part of Oxford University's historic Bodleian library - because of health and safety fears.
The ruling by officials means that students cannot use items on the higher shelves of the Duke Humfrey reading room.
However, the university is standing its ground and refusing to move the books from their 'original historic location' on the room's balcony.
As a result of the stalemate, students have to travel to libraries as far away as London to view other copies.
Art History student Kelsey Williams, 21, had to travel 80 miles to London to view a copy of Arthur Johnston's 1637 work Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum after librarians refused
to get it down for her. She said: 'Access to these books is necessary for my research and I wasted a day travelling to London and looking at the one in the British Library.
to get it down for her. She said: 'Access to these books is necessary for my research and I wasted a day travelling to London and looking at the one in the British Library.
'It's madness because I can practically see the Bodleian's copy every time I walk into Duke Humfrey's.'
Stepladders have been used by scholars to reach books since the library was built more than 400 years ago.
But the University's Health and Safety officer put his foot down last year and they were removed two weeks ago.
A notice given to students requesting the books reads: 'Unable to fetch, book kept on top shelf in gallery. Due to new health and safety measures, stepladders can no longer be used.'
Laurence Benson, the library's director of administration and finance, said: 'The balcony has a low rail and we have been instructed by the health and safety office that this increases the risk.
'As part of the process the restriction on the use of ladders on the balcony have been introduced.
'The library would prefer to keep the books in their original historic location - where they have been safely consulted for 400 years prior to the instructions from the Health and Safety office.'
From: The Daily Mail
Wikipedia Hoax Points to Limits of Journalists' Research
A sociology student placed a fake quote on Wikipedia, only to see it show up in prominent newspapers, revealing that a lot of the press doesn't go much further than most 'Net users when it comes to researching a story.
by: John Timmer
Wikipedia may be a fantastic resource, but any savvy Internet user is aware of its limits. Edit wars, entries made and modified for PR purposes, hoaxes, and basic inaccuracies all creep into (and back out of) the system, meaning that any use of the information there for purposes that might be considered significant should require some serious fact-checking. And, accordingly, many academics don't accept references to Wikipedia, and its entries have been rejected as evidence by US courts. So, it's a bit of a surprise to find out that one Wikipedia hoax, perpetrated by a sociology student, managed to appear in a variety of news reports, and has stayed there even after the hoax was revealed.
According to the AFP, the hoax traces back to Shane Fitzgerald, a student at Ireland's University College Dublin. Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, the student modified his Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," the added material read in part.
Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate, even though fixing a webpage shouldn't be a challenging thing.
Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that journalists use Wikipedia as part of their research—especially in this case, as Jarre's entry comes out on top of the heap in a Google search for his name. However, the discovery that so many of the writers apparently failed to find an additional source on that quote comes at a rather awkward time for journalists in traditional media, who are facing a struggle to stay above water as the newspaper industry is sinking and the line between traditional journalism and casual reporting gets ever blurrier.
A key part of the argument for maintaining traditional journalism is that its trained reporters can perform research and investigations that the untrained masses can't, and the content they produce is run by editors and fact-checkers. The revelation that their research is often no more sophisticated than an average Web surfer's, and that the fact checking can be nonexistent, really doesn't help that argument much.
Of course, it could easily be argued that this was a one-off instance, and the particular circumstances—an obituary—lessens the importance of the gaffe. No harm, no foul. If only that were the case. In what's an excellent piece of journalism, The Wall Street Journal's health blog has tracked the findings of a group of researchers that are exploring how press releases and journalism describe medical research to the public.
We've covered this issue via a couple of anecdotes in the past, but several studies have explored things in a systematic manner, and the results are pretty discouraging. Press releases, the raw material of a lot of journalism, don't always acknowledge the limitations of studies and, at least partially as a result, relevant information is missing from many press reports. "News stories about scientific meeting research presentations often omit basic study facts and cautions," the authors of one of these studies conclude. "Consequently, the public may be misled about the validity and relevance of the science presented."
And that's medicine.
If there are going to be arguments made for the persistence of journalism as a vital force in modern society, they will undoubtedly need to be based on the role of the press in conveying accurate information. Incidents like these, along with the hard numbers provided by more rigorous studies, will make it much harder to make those arguments.
From: ars technica
by: John Timmer
Wikipedia may be a fantastic resource, but any savvy Internet user is aware of its limits. Edit wars, entries made and modified for PR purposes, hoaxes, and basic inaccuracies all creep into (and back out of) the system, meaning that any use of the information there for purposes that might be considered significant should require some serious fact-checking. And, accordingly, many academics don't accept references to Wikipedia, and its entries have been rejected as evidence by US courts. So, it's a bit of a surprise to find out that one Wikipedia hoax, perpetrated by a sociology student, managed to appear in a variety of news reports, and has stayed there even after the hoax was revealed.
According to the AFP, the hoax traces back to Shane Fitzgerald, a student at Ireland's University College Dublin. Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, the student modified his Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," the added material read in part.
Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate, even though fixing a webpage shouldn't be a challenging thing.
Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that journalists use Wikipedia as part of their research—especially in this case, as Jarre's entry comes out on top of the heap in a Google search for his name. However, the discovery that so many of the writers apparently failed to find an additional source on that quote comes at a rather awkward time for journalists in traditional media, who are facing a struggle to stay above water as the newspaper industry is sinking and the line between traditional journalism and casual reporting gets ever blurrier.
A key part of the argument for maintaining traditional journalism is that its trained reporters can perform research and investigations that the untrained masses can't, and the content they produce is run by editors and fact-checkers. The revelation that their research is often no more sophisticated than an average Web surfer's, and that the fact checking can be nonexistent, really doesn't help that argument much.
Of course, it could easily be argued that this was a one-off instance, and the particular circumstances—an obituary—lessens the importance of the gaffe. No harm, no foul. If only that were the case. In what's an excellent piece of journalism, The Wall Street Journal's health blog has tracked the findings of a group of researchers that are exploring how press releases and journalism describe medical research to the public.
We've covered this issue via a couple of anecdotes in the past, but several studies have explored things in a systematic manner, and the results are pretty discouraging. Press releases, the raw material of a lot of journalism, don't always acknowledge the limitations of studies and, at least partially as a result, relevant information is missing from many press reports. "News stories about scientific meeting research presentations often omit basic study facts and cautions," the authors of one of these studies conclude. "Consequently, the public may be misled about the validity and relevance of the science presented."
And that's medicine.
If there are going to be arguments made for the persistence of journalism as a vital force in modern society, they will undoubtedly need to be based on the role of the press in conveying accurate information. Incidents like these, along with the hard numbers provided by more rigorous studies, will make it much harder to make those arguments.
From: ars technica
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Can the Internet Change Your Brain?
Can the Internet Change Your Brain?
by Nick Heath
The relentless bombardment of video, music and information online could permanently alter our brains and trigger neurological disorders, according to an eminent neurologist.
With Western children spending more than six hours per day sat in front of a screen, Baroness Susan Greenfield told the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit it's no coincidence an increasing number of children are today being treated for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The brain is susceptible to being reshaped by our experiences, she said, citing a recent study where London cabbies who memorized the streets of the capital displayed significant growth in the hippocampus - an area of the brain connected with memory.
Describing the online world, Greenfield added: "You are living in a child-like world of actions and sensations that do not mean anything other than what you see is what you get.
"Screen thinking is strongly sensational, short in span, has no conceptual framework, no metaphors and favors process over concept."
Greenfield said that relationships forged in the "computer world", through social networks and multiplayer environments such as Second Life, are "intruding on the full spectrum of human relationships".
"Autistic people are very comfortable in the computer world because relationships do not depend on the tone of the voice, body language, or pheromones.
"It is literally what you see is what you get.
"I wonder that given the malleability of the brain, whether this is responsible for the rise in autism."
Unless action is taken our sense of personal identity will be replaced by the false identities of social networks or the collective identities on Wikipedia, or be destroyed altogether by a fixation on the quick rewards of the internet, Greenfield said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
originally posted on http://www.silicon.com/
by Nick Heath
The relentless bombardment of video, music and information online could permanently alter our brains and trigger neurological disorders, according to an eminent neurologist.
With Western children spending more than six hours per day sat in front of a screen, Baroness Susan Greenfield told the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit it's no coincidence an increasing number of children are today being treated for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The brain is susceptible to being reshaped by our experiences, she said, citing a recent study where London cabbies who memorized the streets of the capital displayed significant growth in the hippocampus - an area of the brain connected with memory.
Describing the online world, Greenfield added: "You are living in a child-like world of actions and sensations that do not mean anything other than what you see is what you get.
"Screen thinking is strongly sensational, short in span, has no conceptual framework, no metaphors and favors process over concept."
Greenfield said that relationships forged in the "computer world", through social networks and multiplayer environments such as Second Life, are "intruding on the full spectrum of human relationships".
"Autistic people are very comfortable in the computer world because relationships do not depend on the tone of the voice, body language, or pheromones.
"It is literally what you see is what you get.
"I wonder that given the malleability of the brain, whether this is responsible for the rise in autism."
Unless action is taken our sense of personal identity will be replaced by the false identities of social networks or the collective identities on Wikipedia, or be destroyed altogether by a fixation on the quick rewards of the internet, Greenfield said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
originally posted on http://www.silicon.com/
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