New radio product
Just posted to my radio archives:
January 22, 2011 Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on what the web is doing to our brains and minds • Robert Fatton, author of Haiti’s Predatory Republic, on Baby Doc’s return, the failure to recover from earthquake, the horrid class system
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Regarding the first guest, I seem to recall someone somewhere – Gawker, maybe – noting that this liberal humanist fetishizing of contemplation as a higher form of thinking than the “primitive,” as Carr put it, multitasking he says that’s encouraged by our current mediasphere is quite blinkered and elitist in that most people in most times lack the time to actually sit down and just read. This isn’t to say that contemplation isn’t valuable, but this assumption Carr seems to imply of a time when people (whoever they were) read in silent contemplation is less problematic as he seems to suggest.
As for Google replacing memory, might that just be an example of blogospheric posturing? Until we’re all Neuromancered into the net, wetware and all…
More problematic, that is.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/01/teachers_beware_they_are_comin.html
Very much worth considering – Obama, GM, and Chrysler used bankruptcy to tear up contractual commitments and destroy pensions… and now the “legal scholars” are pushing for states to declare bankruptcy to bring a little “tough love” to public sector workers and their unions. The focus on this piece is public school teachers: a profession that is under vicious and unprecedented attack from every angle and by “both” parties.
Meanwhile, over at the NYTimes, Paul Krugman delivers another milquetoasty criticism of ObamaNation. The interesting point is the comments section and the thumbs up… the comments that criticize Obama the most from a social-democratic and progressive standpoint are quite popular. The Disillusionment of the Left continues…
To echo Tom, I think Carr’s doing a lot of unnecessary hand-wringing. The left’s doing much better on the net than the right is. That’s because information is our friend. Why crap on it?