Attention versus distraction? What that big NY Times story leaves out » Nieman Journalism Lab

And that, I’d wager, is the root of Vishal’s academic problems: not that he’s not smart — indeed, again, “one of their brightest students” — and not that he’s the victim of a mass outbreak of web-borne distraction (again, that A in film critique). His problem is both simpler and more serendipitous than that: He just doesn’t care about algebra.

great counter-argument by megan garber.  she doesn’t poke holes in mr. carr’s piece, instead getting to the root that isn’t obvious to a lot of people:

What distinguishes Vishal’s apathy, though — and what makes it more anxiety-inducing than that of the algebraic apatheists in whose footsteps he follows — is that he is coming of age in the digital era. And the digital era is bringing a new kind of empowerment not just to interest, but to aversion. The web is a space whose very abundance of information — and whose very informational infrastructure — trains our attention to follow our interests. And vice versa. In that, it’s empowering information as a function of interest. It’s telling Vishal that it’s better to spend time with video than with Vonnegut — simply because he’s more interested editing than in reading. Vishal needs needs no other justification for his choice; interest itself is its own acquittal. While formal learning has been, in the pre-digital world, a matter of rote obligation in the service of intellectual catholicism, the web-powered world is creating a knowledge economy that spins on the axis of interest. Individual interest. The web inculcates a follow your bliss approach to learning that seeps, slowly, into the broader realm of information; under its influence, our notion of knowledge is slowly shedding its normative layers.

establishment is the last thing an evolving society should have regard for, rightfully so.