James Drogan

From A Riff on the Ennui of Summer.

Serendipitously, one of my uninfected students wrote:

With technology advancing as fast as it is, the ability to communicate with people all over the world instantaneously has become a foregone conclusion. Does this mean that we will be able to understand each other better or just communicate faster? (Barnett, 2011)

Barnett raises an interesting question.  Do instantaneous communication, always on, always connected, always transmitting, huge amounts of data (“In 2010, more than 1,200 exabytes of digital information were created.  A single exabyte is equal to about 1 trillion books” (Maney, Hamm, & O’Brien, 2011, p. 126)), and enormous bandwidth equal better understanding between peoples?