Dogman
25th October 2010, 07:53 AM
The author does make some good points to think about, what is real and what is not.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/-/article_2160b4a5-25ac-5658-998e-77b43975b7be.html
Posted: Monday, October 25, 2010 12:00 am | Updated: 3:03 am, Mon Oct 25, 2010.
By Frank T. Pool
Last week, I wrote about book burnings, in the context of "Fahrenheit 451." With a few noteworthy exceptions, book burning is not a problem in contemporary America, but that does not mean that everything is just wonderful.
In an afterward to the 50th edition, Ray Bradbury rails against those who edit and simplify and alter his works. He talks of having written a play that could not be produced on college campuses because it has no women roles. He notes that many people have asked him to revise his work because it is not inclusive enough. Bradbury, a crotchety old man now, "fires" all revisers, refusing to alter his works.
In her excellent book "The Language Police," Dianne Ravitch discusses the pressures textbook publishers encounter from both left and right. It is considered unacceptable for women to be portrayed as doing domestic chores, even, presumably, in depictions of women's lives in history books. Likewise, religious fundamentalists object to children's stories containing dinosaurs or witches.
I have come to hate high school textbooks, but that is a matter for another column. What exercises me this week are the ways reality and imagination can be distorted by people with narrow agendas.
Fifteen years ago, when the Internet really took off, a teacher friend of mine bemoaned the anarchy that would ensue if children simply looked up facts on the Internet. She said even though there is a lot of printed garbage circulating, reputable publishers gave at least some assurance they were not peddling lies. At the time, I was less concerned, thinking that what we have to do is educate young people to separate the grains of truth from the chaff of rumor, misinformation, and downright deceit.
I may have been too optimistic. Technology and culture have started to lead us to a bubble world, a world in which groups of people live in self-contained realms of opinions and "facts."
In the current edition of the "Atlantic," Michael Hirschorn states that "What is unique, and uniquely concerning, about digital media is the speed with which properly packaged (dis)information can spread and how hard it is for fact and reason to catch up."
I remember how a former friend of mine passed along scurrilous lies after 9/11, Internet stories claiming Jews were warned in advance to evacuate the World Trade Center. He continues to believe Israeli agents were responsible for that atrocity.
Likewise, the husband of a friend of mine believes Bill Clinton sold secrets on how to build nuclear bombs to the Chinese. It's on the Internet, after all.
Search engines refine future searches by past ones. Many of us have ordered books online and been given recommendations for other books, based on what we—and others—order. While that is not especially troublesome, it would be disastrous if facts were fed to us based on our propensity to believe them.
Finding themselves stymied by the open-source editing on Wikipedia, a group of activists have constructed an alternate encyclopedia called Conservapedia, with an open right-wing bias. Wikipedia may contain biased articles, but those biases are subject to challenge. Conservapedia's biases are unchallenged; they are presented as "trustworthy."
To paraphrase Hirschorn, how is it possible to engage in responsible political debate when both sides see truth as something not to be found but as something to be manufactured?
Bradbury and Orwell were concerned that knowledge would be choked off by totalitarian authorities. The problem nowadays, however, is simply to recognize the golden grains of truth in a field choked with noxious weeds and inbred nettles.
Frank Thomas Pool is a poet and English teacher working in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in South Longview and graduated from Longview High School.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/-/article_2160b4a5-25ac-5658-998e-77b43975b7be.html
Posted: Monday, October 25, 2010 12:00 am | Updated: 3:03 am, Mon Oct 25, 2010.
By Frank T. Pool
Last week, I wrote about book burnings, in the context of "Fahrenheit 451." With a few noteworthy exceptions, book burning is not a problem in contemporary America, but that does not mean that everything is just wonderful.
In an afterward to the 50th edition, Ray Bradbury rails against those who edit and simplify and alter his works. He talks of having written a play that could not be produced on college campuses because it has no women roles. He notes that many people have asked him to revise his work because it is not inclusive enough. Bradbury, a crotchety old man now, "fires" all revisers, refusing to alter his works.
In her excellent book "The Language Police," Dianne Ravitch discusses the pressures textbook publishers encounter from both left and right. It is considered unacceptable for women to be portrayed as doing domestic chores, even, presumably, in depictions of women's lives in history books. Likewise, religious fundamentalists object to children's stories containing dinosaurs or witches.
I have come to hate high school textbooks, but that is a matter for another column. What exercises me this week are the ways reality and imagination can be distorted by people with narrow agendas.
Fifteen years ago, when the Internet really took off, a teacher friend of mine bemoaned the anarchy that would ensue if children simply looked up facts on the Internet. She said even though there is a lot of printed garbage circulating, reputable publishers gave at least some assurance they were not peddling lies. At the time, I was less concerned, thinking that what we have to do is educate young people to separate the grains of truth from the chaff of rumor, misinformation, and downright deceit.
I may have been too optimistic. Technology and culture have started to lead us to a bubble world, a world in which groups of people live in self-contained realms of opinions and "facts."
In the current edition of the "Atlantic," Michael Hirschorn states that "What is unique, and uniquely concerning, about digital media is the speed with which properly packaged (dis)information can spread and how hard it is for fact and reason to catch up."
I remember how a former friend of mine passed along scurrilous lies after 9/11, Internet stories claiming Jews were warned in advance to evacuate the World Trade Center. He continues to believe Israeli agents were responsible for that atrocity.
Likewise, the husband of a friend of mine believes Bill Clinton sold secrets on how to build nuclear bombs to the Chinese. It's on the Internet, after all.
Search engines refine future searches by past ones. Many of us have ordered books online and been given recommendations for other books, based on what we—and others—order. While that is not especially troublesome, it would be disastrous if facts were fed to us based on our propensity to believe them.
Finding themselves stymied by the open-source editing on Wikipedia, a group of activists have constructed an alternate encyclopedia called Conservapedia, with an open right-wing bias. Wikipedia may contain biased articles, but those biases are subject to challenge. Conservapedia's biases are unchallenged; they are presented as "trustworthy."
To paraphrase Hirschorn, how is it possible to engage in responsible political debate when both sides see truth as something not to be found but as something to be manufactured?
Bradbury and Orwell were concerned that knowledge would be choked off by totalitarian authorities. The problem nowadays, however, is simply to recognize the golden grains of truth in a field choked with noxious weeds and inbred nettles.
Frank Thomas Pool is a poet and English teacher working in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in South Longview and graduated from Longview High School.