More on memories, Wordprocessors, Computers

Posted on January 27, 2008
Filed Under What's New |

On blogcritics a year or so back I posted a blog on the Internet, memory and the shape of our minds. I’ve written about it here and here too. It’s been something I’ve wanted to understand since writing an article nearly two years ago now on a similar subject. I am not a fan of a PC on every desk or a laptop for every child and that began when I interviewed Stephen Bertman,a professor who believes computing power constrains the imagination (by the way I was checking over some of that blogcritics stuff and here is one article I am quite proud of).

I was delighted this morning to find this article on the same subject via this website.

Quote:

“When one of Wittgenstein’s favourite authors, Friedrich Nietzsche, started to use a typewriter and sent some rhymes he produced on it to a friend, the latter - a composer - commented upon the robust language. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom”, the friend wrote; “with me at any rate this could happen; I do not deny that my ‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper”. To which Nietzsche replied: “You are right - our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”"

And

“In what ways, if any, are our thoughts affected by the shift from the pen or the typewriter to a word processor? My question is not whether thinking about computers changes the image we have of ourselves; nor indeed whether computers do or do not think.(5) What I do ask is: With the word processor becoming our writing instrument, what changes do there occur, if any, in the ways and content of our thinking?(6) In particular, what changes can there be discerned, or expected, in terms of the organization of our ideas; in terms of the organization of our memory - our access to, and summary view of, the ideas available to us….”

Wow. That’s pretty much what I was asking.

I wonder if the web can connect me with these guys - I mean rather than jut e-mail or phone them, I want to see will this post open up connections. That would be a small test of the web’s real networking power.

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