Gerald Lappay
Professor Werry
RWS 100
September 1, 2014
A Semi-Public Response to Public Thinking
I believe that Thompson is trying to answer the question of ‘why don’t more people think publicly,’ with thinking publicly being defined as: posting one’s thoughts online. It could be simplified to ‘why don’t people write more’, if it wasn’t for the fact he goes on about studies done on children who express their thoughts and how great of a tool the internet can be. When someone posts online, people read it, understand it, and critique it. It develops intellectual conversation. This process is very powerful for everyone, writers and non-writers alike and I think Thompson is trying to stress this.
The first thing Thompson introduces to us in this piece is Ory Okolloh, an online blogger, who in 2007 covered Kenyan politics in a time of a media shutdown. Everyone who wanted to know about what was going on in Kenya looked to Okolloh’s blog. Publishers and documentary teams flocked to Okolloh, who seemed to be the information hub for everything Kenyan policy related at the time. “A documentary team showed up to interview Okolloh for a film they were producing about female bloggers. They’d printed up all of her blog posts on paper. When they handed her the stack of posts, it was the size of two telephone books.” (Public Thinking 46) Someone who posted two telephone books worth of information is now the talk of the town. A very big town the size of Kenya or larger, at that. The fact that a single person wrote all of this online for people to see and discuss, and later generated this much attention upon Kenya and herself, is interesting; and further proves that public thinking should be a key part in today’s state of writing.
Thompson emphasizes the idea that once someone posts his or her thoughts on a particular topic online, others begin to share their own ideas on the same topic; creating discussion and collaboration. Thompson invites his readers to think about the age-old concept of collaboration. “People who are talking and writing and working on the same thing often find another, trade ideas, and collaborate. Scientists have for centuries intuited the power of resolving multiples, and it’s part of the reason that in the seventeenth century they began publishing scientific journals and setting standards for citing the similar work of other scientists. Scientific journals and citation were a successful attempt at creating a worldwide network, a mechanism for not just thinking in public but doing so in a connected way. Today we have something that works in the same way, but for everyday people: the Internet, which encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid.” (Public Thinking 61) Thompson is highlighting how great of a tool the Internet can be for his concept of public thinking through his own thoughts and research others have done.
Thompson emphasizes the idea that once someone posts his or her thoughts on a particular topic online, others begin to share their own ideas on the same topic; creating discussion and collaboration. Thompson invites his readers to think about the age-old concept of collaboration. “People who are talking and writing and working on the same thing often find another, trade ideas, and collaborate. Scientists have for centuries intuited the power of resolving multiples, and it’s part of the reason that in the seventeenth century they began publishing scientific journals and setting standards for citing the similar work of other scientists. Scientific journals and citation were a successful attempt at creating a worldwide network, a mechanism for not just thinking in public but doing so in a connected way. Today we have something that works in the same way, but for everyday people: the Internet, which encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid.” (Public Thinking 61) Thompson is highlighting how great of a tool the Internet can be for his concept of public thinking through his own thoughts and research others have done.
Another one of his main claims is if thinking out loud has the potential to help you solve things outside of puzzles, why don’t more people do it? He pulls the results from an experiment done in 2008 by professors in Vanderbilt University; where students would solve puzzles quietly or aloud to either their mothers or a tape recorder. “The mere act of articulating their thinking process aloud helped them think more critically.” (Public Thinking 55) If speaking your thought processes out loud can help a young child solve a puzzle more efficiently, why not put this concept on a grander scale? If someone trying to solve one of the world’s biggest problems, say finding a cure to a disease, posts their findings online, what would be the result? This could connect back to the idea that people should think out loud in the form of posting onto the internet; as it helps every online contributor to a discussion in one way or another.
Overall, I believe that the whole reason why Thompson wrote Public Thinking is to get his readers to profess their thoughts to the public, be it online or in a small conference room; as it helps everyone out.
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