Warning! Reading Blogs May Be Bad for You

I think it's time to post an opposing view to all of our exuberant praise for blogging and the way technology gives us access to news.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm not a Luddite and I value technology as much as everyone.  But the fact is that technology is changing the way we receive and share news.  And I don't think that we students have done a particularly good job focusing an observant and critical eye on these changes.

Rather than do it myself, I would like to direct you to a Op-Ed piece posted this week by Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times.  His article is titled "The Daily Me" which is a phrase coined by Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. to refer to our our ability to go online and use technology to select the news we want to read.  

He calls it the "daily me" because, of course, we pick the news sources from which we want to read.  And as has been pointed out in several studies on the topic "there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber."

As I read this article, I thought about our St Peter's blogs.  Many of us (including me) have posted blogs praising all the wonderful technologies to which we have been introduced. And there's nothing wrong with that. But what has bothered me is that I haven't seen blogs that say "Hey, Wait a minute. Are we really considering all the angles here?  What might be the negatives to all our positives?"

Again, I risk sounding like a technology scrooge here. But c'mon students, where's the critical thinking.  Where's the opposing viewpoint?

I don't generally agree with the Op-Ed pieces of Nicholas Kristof because on most issues he's far more conservative than me.  But I read his column regularly.  I can't say the same for the blog literature I read-- it all looks alot alike.  Thank you Mr. Kristof for helping me see the narrowness of my own perspective.