Killing the written word by snippets

American University linguistics professor Naomi S. Brown wonders in the Los Angeles Times if we’re “Killing the written word by snippets.” This excerpt:

But today’s college crowd has a tool we did not: the search engine. Want to learn tap dancing in Austin? Lessons are just a few clicks away. So are the words spoken by the White Rabbit in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” or every reference to dogs in “The Canterbury Tales.” Between Microsoft Word’s “find” function, Project Gutenberg, Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature and Google Print, seeking out precise fragments of information has become child’s play.

Search engines are a blessing. Unquestionably, they save all of us vast amounts of time and shoe leather, not to mention their democratizing effect for users without access to substantial book collections. But there is a hitch.

Much as automobiles discourage walking, with undeniable consequences for our health and girth, textual snippets-on-demand threaten our need for the larger works from which they are extracted. Why read “Bowling Alone” — or even the shorter article upon which it builds — when you can lift a page that contains some key words? In an attempt to coax students to search inside real books rather than relying exclusively on the Web for sources, many professors require references to printed works alongside URLs. Now that those “real” full-length publications are increasingly available and searchable online, the distinction between tangible and virtual is evaporating.

Professor Brown concludes: “If we approach the written word primarily through search-and-seizure rather than sustained encounter-and-contemplation, we risk losing a critical element of what it means to be an educated, literate society.” Is she right?

Comments are closed.