The Age of External Knowledge [1]

Today’s idea: Filtering, not remembering, is the most important mental skill in the digital age, an essay says. But this discipline will prove no mean feat, since mental focus must take place amid the unlimited distractions of the Internet.

Internet | Edge, the high-minded ideas and tech site, has posed its annual question for 2010 — “How is the Internet changing the way you think?” [4] — and gotten some interesting responses from a slew of smart people. They range from the technology analyst Nicholas Carr, who wonders [5] if the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing; to Clay Shirky, social software guru, who sees the Web poised uncertainly [6] between immature “Invisible High School” and more laudable “Invisible College.”

David Dalrymple, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,thinks [7] human memory will no longer be the key repository of knowledge, and focus will supersede erudition. Quote:

Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends’ doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally. [Edge [7] via The Daily Dish [8]]

More Recommended Reading:

• The Washington Post’s “Collapse” [9] – Gabriel Sherman, The New Republic
• Who Killed the Iranian Nuclear Scientist? [10] – Dieter Bednarz, Der Spiegel
• An Experimental Homeless Community in the New Jersey Woods [11] – Alex Morris, New York
• Far From Being Luddites, the Amish Are “Anything But Anti-Technological” [12] – Kevin Kelly, The Technium
• Pentagon Sees Risk in U.S. Geek Shortage [13] – Katie Drummond, Wired
• The Death of Joe Average [14] – Frédéric Filloux, Monday Note
• Despite iPods and Walkmen, Rates of Hearing Loss Dropping [15] – Alexis Madrigal, Wired
• Origins of the Hitler One-Testicle Story [16] – Tony Perrottet, The Smart Set