Philip Rosedale response to Douglas Rushkoff

It seems possible that some of the fears that we have about the impact of technology on people and specifically on learning, reading, and kids may change dramatically as the technology itself continues to rapidly build and change. For example, we may find books to be more readable and accessible than ever in an age where we can hold a Kindle (model X) in our hands and quietly read all the world's great books at our leisure on e-ink screens that in a couple more generations will surpass the grain and quality of ink printed onto paper. I'd much rather be able to read Nabokov on one of these devices than need the money to amass a houseful of expensive books. Or, stranger yet, imagine sitting under a beautiful tree in a virtual world, reading that same book. It may be that the age of the cathode-ray-tube-as-screen (which makes reading in the traditional way very hard due to eye-strain) is the real problem, not computers or networks. But that is only the briefest moment, now all but passed, in the emerging story. It is kind of like that comparison to MP3... understand that in a couple more storage cycles we will be able to store every minute of human music ever recorded in a device the size of an IPod, uncompressed. The tradeoff of quality to quantity is a temporary thing. Certainly the quick holographic view is novel and narcotic, but we will soon be offered everything, and if there is any lasting competitive benefit to us of traditional reading (and I suspect there is), we will go after it. ...

On the other hand, what if it turns out that reading full-length books doesn't help us be any more successful or happy or self-realized in life? Again, I doubt it, but what if? Are we to take the position that somehow people are naturally supposed to read? Shall we force the next generation to read, if it does not confer any benefits? That seems ridiculous. Books are a recent innovation themselves, and of course at the time were criticized as bringing to an end the quality of human memory and extemporaneous expression. It would be easy to see the internet the same way - for example as a terrible 'threat' to the crucial human experience of actually being in the same room with each other.

A final thought is that we may all begin to meditate more! As Henry talks about in the program as well, we seem able (at least so far) to survive a tremendous increase in available information. As technology moves all of this information increasing into real-time, what will we do? I suspect that we will respond by balancing periods of extreme information intake with recovery periods of relative isolation. The middle ground of balancing cell phone on shoulder while reading email will probably not turn out to be optimal. So we will intensify our immersion in media, but also take breaks where we turn all this strange new gear off. Actually, the human brain already has such a corrective mechanism - sleep!