Slow thinking

I always admire people who think quickly, and that's a fairly commonly held value I think. Living with knowledge only a search away has created the opportunity for more people to be more informed in their thinking. This is all good, right? A recent article is making me reconsider the relative value of slow thinking (or, contemplative thought, to use a more fancy-pants name).

Nicholas Carr, writing in The Atlantic.com, eloquently addresses the disturbing and far-reaching changes wrought by our increasing dependence on the Internet for information and entertainment. In his 4,000-word article, Carr develops his argument using Kubrick, Nietzsche, Socrates, Frederick Winslow Taylor, the Gutenberg printing press, as well as contemporary writers and players. Halfway through, I felt the need to print it out so that I could read it in a way that allowed me to absorb what he was saying and develop my own thoughts as I read. Actually, that just made Carr's argument: the Internet is the antithesis of 'leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought.'

I found particularly disturbing the comments from those who had noticed they were losing the ability or interest in deep reading -- and these are people who had previously invested themselves in reading and thinking deeply. They are surely a small minority of the greater populace, which has for decades used television, movies and Cliff Notes as primary sources of information and entertainment.

And yet to meet the challenges of today, more than ever we need fresh and complex thinking. More is at stake: decisions in one place can affect people globally. Economic, environmental, political risks are higher, and change is happening at a pace unheard of in human history. Yet our thinking is more mechanistic, and we are more likely to accept simple solutions based on invalid logic than complex solutions that are actually more likely to succeed. If the solution requires more explanation than a sound bite, it won't be heard. But Carr's point is even more distressing: even if people could stay tuned for the entire explanation, they wouldn't be able to perform the complex thinking required to interpret and understand the content because their wetware has been reprogrammed by today's technologies.

The implications -- for business, technology, politics, our world -- are tremendous. Critical thinking, in the classic sense, is required for problem-solving. What passes for critical thinking (the bombastic criticism of talk radio and cable opinion shows) in the popular mind has assumed primacy in forming opinion, and the popular mind is grateful that it doesn't have to engage in the rigor required of true critical thinking. What a feedback loop!