How Content is Changing Culture

"...culture is effectively eating its own seed stock." A very interesting article posted in Sunday's New York Times, "Texts Without Context," detailing the shift in how people receive and process information. Drawing on books like Nick Carr's forthcoming The Shallows, and Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, the lengthy article describes the issue from all angles: how creators of content are being marginalized to produce bits for no charge (published via social media and other internet sources), and how recipients of that content pick and choose what they want, which merely reinforces their interest and ideals, potentially closing the door on discourse and unbiased, broader learning. And where does this lead? We can only speculate, but it doesn't look good. However, this is the state of things. And articles like the NYT piece and the books mentioned offer an examination of this situation. We must be conscious of it.