I once saw surfing the net compared to riding a jet ski. But what about deep sea diving?  Have we become so distracted and addicted to speed, that we no longer take the time for deep reading and deep thinking? I have been reading along these lines for quite awhile now and am currently reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Fascinating read. Don’t  dismiss it as a Ludite polemic.  The author spends lots of time with the history of information technologies and how each one has changed our way of looking at the world. When each technology is new, there is much lamentation about the loss of a particular skill that the previous technology fostered.

A true “renaissance mind” will seek to maintain as many of those skills as possible, whether it be the ability to expand the memory or the ability to scan the surface of many subjects and make connections between them.Ultimately, I feel that the internet CAN foster both types of world views – the view from the jet ski which scans the “whole picture” AND the view of the scuba diver who can examine a small concept in great depth. It is a matter of training our brains both ways.

I was struck again by this metaphor the other day during my daily walk. I was thinking about how many times I have passed through the countryside that surrounds my school. Always absorbing the world in a blur as I drove past. Getting the whole picture, but missing the details. Now that I am walking almost daily, I realize that what I once considered to be a very ordinary countryside is actually a thing of great beauty. I get to notice the play of light on the farmer’s field and the flight of the birds from one branch to another, the changes in color and tone from one season to the next….so much beautiful detail totally missed when driving past quickly.

The other day a car stopped at the side of the road and a woman stepped out. I thought perhaps she was having car trouble and needed assistance – but then I noticed that she had a camera in hand. She said “I had to stop. This is SO beautiful!” She was referring to a panorama of golden fields, with the lovely shading provided by rolling hills and a particularly gorgeous play of light on the land, complete with flocks of birds dipping a soaring everywhere. She talked of how  people are so busy with thier ipods and their text messaging that they never look up to see the beautiful world around them. She mentioned that she was an artist and often stopped to take pictures of these special moments. She had the trained eye of an artist. Her comments made me think of Daniel Pink. Of all the authors writing about the changing information landscape, he is by far my favorite writer/thinker. He has recognized how the internet and technology have expanded our world and has also addressed the variety of abilities needed to succeed in this new world. We need to train our minds to look at the world in different ways – with a “whole new mind”, the mind of an artist and a musician as well as a scholar. We need to develop our senses and expand our intelligenses. And I would add that we need to train our students to look at the world through mutiple lenses so that they are adept both at scanning the horizon AND seeing the glorious detail as an artist (or a scuba diver) does. Let’s not cut our arts and music programs. Instead, let’s integrate them into our academic subjects.  This will open the world to ALL our students, and take advantage of all their special abilities and viewpoints.

We need to jet ski to see the possibilities and scuba dive to examine more closely those possibilities that trigger our passions.

As I contemplate retirement, I know I need to examine the possibilities so that I can channel my passions into something beyond the libraries I have focused on for the last 40 years.

What’s out there for me?  I need to develop a “whole new mind“.