An excerpt from this book was published in Wired magazine back in May:

There’s nothing wrong with absorbing information quickly and in bits and pieces. We’ve always skimmed newspapers more than we’ve read them, and we routinely run our eyes over books and magazines to get the gist of a piece of writing and decide whether it warrants more thorough reading. The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis. (Wired: “The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains” by Nicholas Carr, May 24th, 2010)

About Nicholas Carr:

Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology. He is the author of the 2008 Wall Street Journal bestseller The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is “widely considered to be the most influential book so far on the cloud computing movement,” according the Christian Science Monitor. His earlier book, Does IT Matter?, published in 2004, “lays out the simple truths of the economics of information technology in a lucid way, with cogent examples and clear analysis,” said the New York Times. He is working on a new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, which will be published in 2010. Carr’s books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. (Bio)

Three things: 1) It’s yet another good reason to try and differentiate between information and knowledge (one could say that information is to knowledge what grapes are to wine : its raw material); 2) It would be a mistake to think that gadgets or the Internet are changing our brain configuration. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s an incomplete statement. What then, should one ask, caused the gadgets to change? What caused the Internet? 3) The form of this post can be understand as an illustration of what the content of the post is about.

Arment, as do so many others, really wants to believe that the door-close button does nothing in an elevator. There are stories going around about this: door-close buttons aren’t really working in elevators, they are just there so you can feel like you’re in control. For his article, Paumgarten may have got some information about this from Otis representative:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. (more)

But there’s no specific references in his article : who did confirm this to him? Is it true about all elevators? All brands? Everywhere? Can an elevator be configured one way while another elevator, identical in brand and model, be configured another way? There’s no hard fact about this in the article. Nothing to prove that all door-close buttons are fake. And nothing to disprove it.

And that’s why Arment reaction is so interesting. He doesn’t know for a fact if the door-close button work or not in a given elevator. But he wants to feel in control : he doesn’t want to be controlled by an elevator’s fake button (eh, come on, nobody’s that stupid : we’re not monkeys, right?). So he will likely dismissed any piece of information telling him the very opposite of what he wants to believe. Just like those who believe in the door-close button will dismiss any delay in the closing of the door as being a sign that they did not controlled its action. Arment, though, will be very interested in information (Paumgarten’s article for example) that reinforce his belief. Just like the door-close button believers will consider any closing door as being an empirical proof of the control they can have on the elevator.

And thus, those who think the door-close button is just a fake are not smarter than those who think the door-close button works. It’s just two different ways to cope with a lack of adequate information, a certain degree of uncertainty : without hard facts about this issue, we’re all but believers trying to stay in control in front of an ambiguous situation.

[Update : July 17th, 2010] The same argument goes for Slavoj Zizek:

Zizek loves to correct viewpoints when precisely the opposite is considered correct. He calls this counterintuitive observation. His favorite thought form is the paradox. Using his psychoanalytical skills, he attempts to demonstrate how liberal democracy manipulates people. One of his famous everyday observations on this subject relates to the buttons used to close the door in elevators. He has discovered that they are placebos. The doors don’t close a second faster when one presses the button, but they don’t have to. It’s sufficient that the person pressing the button has the illusion that he is able to influence something. The political illusion machine that calls itself Western democracy functions in exactly the same way, says Zizek. (Spiegel Online: “Welcome to the Slavoj Zizek Show” by Philipp Oehmke, July 8th, 2010)

“Cliff Kuang is a regular contributor to Print. He is a former editor at Harper’s, The Economist, and I.D., and writes regularly for Popular Science, Wired, and Fast Company.”

Errol Morris’ essay on the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Read the original study conducted by Maksim Kitsak, Lazaros K. Gallos, Shlomo Havlin, Fredrik Liljeros, Lev Muchnik, H. Eugene Stanley and Hernan A. Makse : “Identifying influential spreaders in complex networks” (submited to Physics and Society on Jann 28, 2010).

“Thomas Goetz is the executive editor of Wired magazine and author of the new book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. As part of the reporting for the book, he had his genome scanned, was screened for more than a dozen diseases, and has tracked his sleep, blood pressure, weight, calories and oodles of other metrics. He holds a masters of public health from UC Berkeley.” (more)

More abour the SkyGrabber software here. Read a recent New Yorker article about “The Predator War” and “the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program” by Jane Mayer (Oct. 26, 2009).

About Edward Tufte:

“Edward Rolf Tufte (born 1942) is an American statistician and Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. He has been described by The New York Times as “the da Vinci of Data”. He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. Tufte lives in Cheshire, Connecticut. He periodically travels around the United States to offer one-day workshops on data presentation and information graphics.” (wikipedia)

Previously on Skandalon : Power Point.