This is the last post building on my post of a few days ago:
We have, to me, reached an imbalance and a need to shift in our use of smart
phones, iPads, Twitter, Tumblr and that kind of technology. These things have,
as John J. Pitney Jr. wrote in the 10/15 Christian
Science Monitor, “increased the speed and reach of communications…so that
almost as soon as a thought enters your mind you can send it everywhere.
Twitter-like thinking—the kind that relies on quick intuition and impulse—can
work well when we’re playing sports, for instance.
“Of course, the internet also brings huge benefits. It is
now possible to access more kinds of information than ever before in history. But
most people have neither the time nor the know-how to sort through the
countless government documents and scholarly studies available online. They
have to rely on public figures and news organizations that are the objects of
distrust or partisan scorn.
“As columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan
has written, ‘Someday we’ll be told something true that we need to know and we
won’t believe that, either.’ Long before anyone could have imagined the
technological marvels that we carry in our pockets, the Founders understood the
risk of hasty judgment.
“In The Federalist No.
71, Alexander Hamilton wrote: ‘When occasions present themselves, in which
the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it the
duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those
interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them [the
people] time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.’
“The moral is that public figures, reporters, and
commentators of all kinds should take a breath and think before they post. Slow
down, because speed kills.”
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