The Siren Call of Infinite Knowledge

Peggy Orenstein wrote an article about an app that blocks internet for up to eight hours. At first I dismissed this article - I'm pretty tired of stories of people who can't exert enough self-control that they need a program to cut them off from the internet (which you can get around by simply rebooting, deemed 'humiliating'... come on). Further into the article, 'The Odyssey' was mentioned... specifically for Ulysses having to bind himself to the mast of his ship when encountering the sirens because he was helpless otherwise. Again with the helpless. Despite it being on my shelf, I haven't read The Odyssey (BAD librarian, NO COOKIE), and until now I always thought the sirens were tempting with nookie.

Those mythical bird-women (look it up) didn’t seduce with beauty or carnality — not with petty diversions — but with the promise of unending knowledge. “Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens,” they crooned to passing ships, vowing that any sailor who heeded their voices would emerge a “wiser man.” That is precisely the draw of the Internet.

I will admit to having lost quite a few hours to the endless links of the internet, the thing is the internet and its endless information is still there when I go away. I can pick up right where I've left off. Another point the article makes is that the internet isn't unending knowledge, it's unending information.

What's the difference between knowledge and information? Is knowledge the result of really thinking about information? Is it the practice of studying it instead of letting it all wash right over, in one ear and out the other? I'm not sure a library is so different from the internet that way. It's harder to be distracted by leaps away from the original subject at least. Physical books aren't linked together by the twitch of an index finger on a mouse button.

Still, I think that it's still up to the user to exert self-control. No one is helpless to the internet; there are such things, as with real books, as bookmarks, logging off and putting the book aside, page marked for later. I feel more obligated to read a physical book all the way through if I read just a part of it, but I don't so much have that problem with the internet.