Active users of the Internet, Cosmopolitanism

“Mind control: Is the internet changing how we think?”
(http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/16/internet.brain.carr/index.html)

This headline stood out to me in relation to the discussion in class about whether consumers of media are active or passive audiences. The article talks about the new Google instant search and then focuses on Nicolas Carr (author of a book about the topic of internet use and brains) and how he feels that Internet use has changed his ability to stay focused on one thought for long periods of time. I have thought about this issue as I remember how doing research on the Internet for one hour used to make me feel very tired and now I can spend many hours online. (This may have something to do with how long the dial-up took to load a page). My ability to stay on the Internet going through large amounts of information has increased. I think that an active user of the Internet can make conscious choices that do not hinder attentiveness. While it can be overwhelming to sift through the massive quantities of information available, does this really shift our ability to think critically and be attentive? It does seem that many people have problems getting to their work (hence the software that blocks internet use for periods of time). In order to be truly productive, some people have to make Google unavailable to write or do other work without distraction.

The power of the availability of information and how we use that resource for personal and public reasons relates to some of the ideas in the readings for this week. I was thinking about how Google search can create some of the elements of cosmopolitanism that Waisbord discusses in "Media and the Reinvention of the Nation". For example, when a person does a search on a specific topic from anywhere in the world, Google search does not produce results that are tailored to that person’s nationality. The tool is more about creating common ground than emphasizing difference. This fits in with his point about it being “difficult to attribute national citizenship to media content.” (p. 381). Google servers and software do not make differentiations based on nationality, but simply upon how many hits sites have received. While Google does make targeted advertising according to past search histories, these histories are not linked to national identity. Drawing from the Castell's reading, Google could be looked at as an area of public diplomacy, where information is shared and developed by the public users of the site.