More food for thought.
“And Google is scanning every book on the planet. Everything will be scanned into computers the size of Kansas owned by Google, and everything will become searchable — but why would anyone want to search? Because it’s all just data, digital crap floating around. In that environment, young people won’t want to learn very much, because it’s all just out there. Are we entering an infantile, low-engagement future in which nobody ever does anything? … Are we going to look back on this era of individualism and think, ‘It’s over’? It doesn’t seem to be working. That’s become really apparent in the past five to eight years or so — so much information, and it is changing us. I definitely think we’re different now. Our attention spans are shorter and we think we can answer every question immediately — thank you, Google and Wikipedia.”
Brian Appleyard interviews Douglas Coupland author of Generation ‘X’ and now Generation ‘A’ (Sunday Times, 13 September 2009)
