Shock of the New?

A friend cited an article in the NYT, "The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s," By BRAD STONE (Jan 9 2010), which he called "thought provoking."

Another friends dismissed this as a couple of anecdotes supporting nothing (while conceding the quality of the writing).

I agreed, and in more detail, as follows -- along with another complaint about online newspapers.

* The generation gap thing may be overplayed; they've been singing that tune for twenty years - yet I don't feel, at 63, left behind by my 26-year-old twins who've lived with etc etc. If I weren't into all this stuff myself, I might be, but I'd equally be if I didn't follow their musical preferences or fashion sense (which I don't). Not much of a gen gap, if you ask me.

* If you want to see a more thoughtful take on speed-of-change and its impact on society and, more significantly, how people think, go get a copy of "The Shock of the New," the coffee-table version of the PBS TV series from the 1970s, where Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes did a fantastic job (despite the handicap of his Australian accent ;-) and a '70s hairstyle ) of conveying the enormous impact of change on the Western world of 1880 - 1920 era.

* When oh when will sites (even the NYT for God's sake) stop with the stupid, irrelevant, dumb, distracting, numbskull linking of random words and phrases? They link California State University, for God's sake, to "more articles about California State University," though this has zero to do with the article, or with anything any reader is likely to want to pursue -- a link to the quoted professor's research, OTOH, would have been valuable - but no. They don't even link to the specific school, Dominguez Hills -- there are several dozen Cal State Universities! It's like linking to "more articles about universities," and every bit as pointless.

This is what you get when some bright person creates a linking robot. Somebody please end the madness! Or at the very least, somebody at these pubs please look at your data -- I bet half your links get zero clicks! You simply add to a world of pointless distraction!

mac