Information poisoning

Mon, 08 Jan 2001 17:42:00 +0000

Any author striking out in a new direction following one or more successes in a given genre can expect to face the question, "What made you decide to try this?" And having elected, after writing two historical novels that were received by the public with the kind of enthusiasm that is, to say the least, humbling, to turn my sights on speculative fiction -- specifically, on a novel set a quarter of a century in the future -- I expected to hear that question. What I have been unprepared for is the underlying anger that has sometimes tinged it. It has not so much been a case of "Why did you do this?" as "What the hell is your problem?" After much thought, I believe I may understand where this feeling is coming from.

"Killing Time," my latest book, has been repeatedly described as "dystopian," a word I confess I don't quite understand; but it cannot be denied that the novel paints a rather harsh picture of the immediate future, and specifically of the nature and possible long-term effects of the triumph of information technology. It is my belief, for which I offer no apology, that most of that technology is making people dumber: It is teaching them how to assemble massive amounts of information, of arcane minutia, without simultaneously teaching them how to assemble those bits of information into integrated bodies of knowledge -- such integration being the only function that distinguishes the human brain from a mechanical computer.

Salon.com > Caleb Carr

Information poisoning