The Quick and the Stupid

An interesting piece in the Boston Globe about the rise of "group think" in academic scholarship suggests that far from broadening perspectives, it turns out that having the world at our fingertips means we tend not to reach very far. In a short article published by James Evans in Science (I will attach it when I learn how) over the summer, the American sociologist showed that as academic publications began to be available online towards the late 1990s, there has been a tendency to cite fewer and more recently published articles. Evans argues that while online availability greatly improves accessibility and efficiency, it has also tended to narrow searches and accelerate consensus. Of particular importance is the use of hyperlinks which allows researchers to immediately link to other material thereby enabling them to "quickly reach and converge with prevailing opinion," which in turn leads to "more citations referencing fewer articles."

What to make of this? Is it possible that the plainly beneficial efficiency and functionality of computers and the internet are actually narrowing our intellectual standards? While this is not necessarily the case, it seems that presently the trend is to reference what everyone else is referencing, to conclude what everyone else is concluding. In certain disciplines racing to consensus can make sense, especially in the sciences where conflicting theories can cause stagnation. The author of the study above points out, such consensus building probably reflects the fact that your work will likely be overlooked completely if it doesn't fall somewhat in line. But rather than reflecting some ominous Big Brother authoritarianism, such consensus forming is more about staying relevant - ensuring your work reaches others in your field.

The internet is enabling greater homogeneity outside of universities too. In a famous article by Wired editor Chris Anderson in 2003, he described what he called "The Long Tail" of the entertainment industry where, though summer blockbusters and the latest Lil' Wayne album take the bulk of attention, a long tail of lesser known products find their way to diverse consumer preferences. The internet, in his view, was opening up a new era of consumerism where the most particular and arcane tastes had the opportunity of being fulfilled. The internet allowed for a greater variety of tastes and opinions - "niches by the thousands" - than ever before. But this optimistic view of things is being contradicted by research which shows that particularly in the entertainment industry, more people are watching and listening to less.

The pooling together of certain ideas or products at the expense of countless others is partly a function of the necessity of organizing the seemingly infinite amount of data available through the digital medium. But ranking articles according to their citations, or web-pages according to their hits, will inevitably emphasize popularity above all else. In some cases, this may indeed be a matter of the cream rising to the top. But just as often if not more so, pure random chance, arbitrary fate, is responsible for one thing being held up above all others, and this is no less at work in the realm of ideas than any other human endeavor. Schopenhauer greatly resented his contemporary Hegel's enormous influence and prestige when compared to his own obscurity. Back then, in the age of wooden lecterns and leather-bound books, the latter was an intellectual rockstar and the former hardly a roadie. He would have been driven bonkers in our age of blogs and wikipedia.

The internet makes research appear extremely easy, click a few buttons and you've achieved in minutes what less than 20 years ago took weeks of patient searching and filtering. As nobody wants to work harder than they have to, it makes sense that scholars and researchers are making use of online journals and articles. But clicking buttons which an algorithm has made into a hyperlink is not equal to actually doing the work yourself. Sifting through tables of contents can often provide more general insight than looking for a particular word or phrase in thousands of articles. We should be very careful not to let the efficiency and convenience of our technologies diminish our ability to do research the old fashioned way: hard work.