Digital psychosis

[Over]

Digital psychosis
March 11, 2010

I was browsing the other day through the New York Review of Books — the rabble may prefer the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, but for me nothing beats a saucy disquisition on eighteenth-century Venetian art — when I came upon the following arresting passage in an essay entitled "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future" by Jason Epstein, a revered figure in the book business:

No disrespect to Jason Epstein, but this is a prime example of what I call digital psychosis: the predisposition of smart — nay, brilliant — people to believe things about technology that are completely nuts.

You're not seeing it? Let's examine the cited passage. Few would quarrel with the claim that Gutenberg's invention more than any other pulled us out of the swamps. (Some will argue for the wheel, admittedly a useful gadget, but come now. Five thousand years after the invention of the wheel we were still hauling manure in oxcarts. Fifty years after the invention of movable type we'd begun to depopulate the New World.)

Epstein now asserts that the coming revolution will be orders of magnitude greater. An order of magnitude is commonly understood to mean a power of ten, and the plural suggests a minimum of two. From this we deduce that the looming tsunami will be, at minimum, a hundred times more powerful than any previous upheaval. Epstein, in other words, believes digitization — publishing books electronically rather than on paper — will have a greater effect on civilization than anything short of an asteroid strike.

Seems to me there are two possible reactions to this prediction:

Yipes.

Get a grip.

Come now, you say. The man is engaging in a bit of harmless hype. He's merely saying digitization will affect the diffusion of knowledge even more profoundly than the invention of moveable type. Isn't that obvious?

No, it's not. All that's obvious is that people think it's obvious. This is a manifestation of digital psychosis.

I'll return to book publishing later, but examples of digital psychosis are to be seen everywhere. For example, in a recent interview, Web pioneer Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, urged traditional media companies to "shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly," since the future is self-evidently online. This idea is daft. Ninety percent of newspaper ad revenue comes from print, less than 10 percent from online. NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker — and mind you, the man's in television — has spoken of trading analog dollars for digital dimes. Newspapers in general remain a profitable business; even bankrupt outfits like Tribune Company are operating in the black. Who would seriously suggest heaving tens of billions of dollars over the side in the faint hope of recovering a fraction of it online? Only someone suffering from digital psychosis.

Another example: while noshing with friends recently I observed that U.S. national debt would soon exceed the gross domestic product, the first time this had happened since World War II. (I ask you, am I the life of the party or what?) Working the war debt down to a manageable level had taken 20 years, and I ventured the thought that doing so now would be even tougher, since the U.S. was less dominant economically than it had been in the postwar era.

To my surprise, this anodyne comment was vehemently disputed by a member of the group, who argued that vast U.S. wealth would materialize from technologies yet undreamt of, and this would wash away the debt. I responded mildly that while I hoped this was the case, the fact that we were now competing for scarce resources with countries like China made our prospects uncertain. Honestly, does that sound to you like a radical notion? But my friend was adamant that we had naught to fear — ingenuity would solve all. I backed off. One recognized the signs. Digital psychosis.

Even those who know they've succumbed to the delirium can't help themselves. Last month Newsweek columnist Daniel Lyons announced his disappointment with the Apple iPad, plaintively asking, "Why do we invest so much hope in new technology?" He was speaking of a company whose previous new product, the iPhone, is widely held to have revolutionized the cell phone — why, even I have one, which I used to level a picture in my daughter's dorm room. How wacky is that? It seems reasonable to me on the basis of the iPhone to expect that the iPad will also be a remarkable product. Lyons, on the other hand, concedes that while the device had its points, it isn't "magical" — on the order, one supposes, of Harry Potter's wand. He fully recognizes that this is loony thinking, yet he thinks it. Another sad case of digital psychosis.

You may be saying to yourself: this guy's a primitive. I acknowledge this is true. I've been online since Compuserve days, but still think of computers as improved typewriters and the Internet as a telephone party line with pictures. Nonetheless, I accept the general proposition that technology will change things — just maybe not as much as some people think.

Let's return to books. I don't quarrel with the argument that digitization will upend the publishing industry. No doubt some books will always be printed, lest we have nothing to put on our coffee tables but coffee. But your basic text-only tome — no question, it's cheaper to buy a digital version, and we have the grudging admission of Nicholson Baker that you can lose yourself in an electronic book (he had a Kindle) just as you can in the paper kind. Amazon says it sells more Kindle books now than paper ones. We may safely predict many books hereafter will be published only in digital form, and that titles produced by small firms or authors themselves will proliferate. Some of these books will become monster bestsellers based solely on word-of-mouth, or word-of-blog; the power of big corporate publishers in consequence will diminish. Amazon et al will make a zillion bucks.

So yes, things will be different, but in the grand scheme, not so much. The notion that digital books will transform civilization — excuse me, this is crazy talk. Digital books arguably are an improvement over the current method of book distribution, but they're not going to revolutionize anything except in the sense of putting bookstores out of business. They're not going to bring enlightenment to backward corners of the planet; on the contrary, they require complicated, expensive technology available only to the affluent. A paper book found in an attic retains its power to conjure another world; if you stumble on a Kindle with its battery discharged, you've got an inert plastic box.

One wants to give the thing its due. Will digital technology create new possibilities, giving rise, for example, to new art forms melding text, sound, video and smell? I wouldn't be surprised. Will it have consequences no one now foresees? Assuredly this is true also. However, if these thoughts inspire visions of Jesus, you need to get out of the house till the hallucination passes. Digital psychosis has got you in its grip.

— Ed Zotti

Source: http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc2010gutenberg.php

[andygates]

Wow, this article's about fifteen years late to the party. The web dunnit already.

[charleski]

Zotti's absolutely right. There are a lot of starry-eyed digital fantasists who need to stop sucking on the roach. Digital systems are critically dependent on infrastructure, and that still has a long way to go.

[HorridRedDog]

""....
So yes, things will be different, but in the grand scheme, not so much. The notion that digital books will transform civilization — excuse me, this is crazy talk."

People on this website are often little more than computer nerds living a protected life, safe, behind their computer screens.

You see only the finer aspects of life and think that you see all. What, to you, is a wide panorama of life is but a myopic aspect of a pitiful delusion.

You argue over an "orders of magnitude" or "orders of magnitudes"!

What hideous fate can be instore for us when the best and the brightest of us argue, for and against, such minuscule differences as orders of magnitudes.

For behold, the barbarians at the gate:

http://media.peopleofwalmart.com/wp-...010/02/912.jpg

http://media.peopleofwalmart.com/wp-...009/11/536.jpg

http://media.peopleofwalmart.com/wp-...009/11/544.jpg

http://media.peopleofwalmart.com/wp-...009/11/606.jpg

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Ah. So this is where trolls hang out when they're bored.

[Greg Anos]

I don't know about digital books per se, but the digitization of the world production is ongoing and is a bigger change than agriculture. The trends are clear.

Some Laugh-In predictions. (The news 20 years from now....)

The top box office draw for an actor is....Humphrey Bogart, who pushed Cary Grant out of his number one slot over the last three years. In a related story, the DAG (Dead Actor's Guild) is going on strike against the using of synthetic actors in movies. The spokesman for the guild stated that totally synthetic actors had no drawing power and were just taking money out of the estates that needed the income.


The last assembly line job in the US was replaced by a robot yesterday. Noted heart surgeon Hack Cutter hung up his scalpel, stating "I just can't compete on quality and price. My patients are better off without me."


Finally, Democratic President Johny Depp announced that copyright will be extended until 2900, in a bid to get the DAG support for his re-election. The Pirate party candidate has come out with a platform of repeal of the Copyright Act, and a rise in the Technologically Displaces Workers payment of 6 per cent. President Deep, lambasted the Pirate Party as "Destroyers of Civilization". "They should live on royalties, like me, rather that be bums on the public dole."

Laugh-In looked at the News... La DA Da.

[gastan]

Originally Posted by Over

Source: http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc2010gutenberg.php
Some will argue for the wheel, admittedly a useful gadget, but come now. Five thousand years after the invention of the wheel we were still hauling manure in oxcarts. Fifty years after the invention of movable type we'd begun to depopulate the New World.

Not that the historical facts are funny but this way of stating it sure gave me an abrupt chuckle.

More to the point, I've noticed that excessive hyperbole seems to be growing in popularity year by year. Every time you turn around someone is proclaiming the "biggest" this or the "worst" that or the "storm of the century" or some other similarly over-blown bit of tripe. I doubt it will get any better considering how young people are being "educated" today.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by gastan

Not that the historical facts are funny but this way of stating it sure gave me an abrupt chuckle.

More to the point, I've noticed that excessive hyperbole seems to be growing in popularity year by year. Every time you turn around someone is proclaiming the "biggest" this or the "worst" that or the "storm of the century" or some other similarly over-blown bit of tripe. I doubt it will get any better considering how young people are being "educated" today.

It may be fun to give completely urelated historical facts together, giving only the distance in time between them...

Fifty years after the first ever recorded whiskey consumption by catholic monks in Ireland, Gutenberg invented movable type and started to print the Bible.

Fifty years after an unexplicable astrological event observed in Piacenza, Italy, the U.S. of A. stated their Declaration of Independence

Just nine years after Denmark won the European Football Championship, terrorists stroke the Twin Towers....

[Kali Yuga]

Yes, we should all keep in mind that technology is the sole demesne of hyperbole.

I'm not impressed with "Zotti's" (aka the Straight Dope) conclusion here; he picks out one extreme statement, and essentially ignores the rest of the article, which is much more rational and measured than the SD's critique suggests.

I think we'd be better off reading Epstein's article rather than the Straight Dope's "analysis."