During the school week we were assigned to read the article "The Elusive Big Idea" by Neal Gabler. Because of all the great articles that we have already read this quarter I wasn't not looking forward to it. Once again an article from this class has actually made me enjoy reading.
While I was reading throughout this article I found myself agreeing with Gabler in very many instances of the text. When he says, "If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it's not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don't care as much about ideas as they did" (Gabler 2) I agreed with what was said. There was just one thing that did give me a sense of disagreement, it's that he said that we are not dumber than our forebears. This I disagree with because I have seen the world now, especially the United States, showing how dumb or stupid the general public is of this year and generation. There have been tons of studies showing that the public is quite dumb and ignorant.
I did agree with pretty much everything else he said. He talks about society being more interested in "who Jennifer Aniston is dating right now" than interested in finding or creating the next big "thing" or idea. This is true for tons of people I know personally in my life, especially the females.
He also points out that some of the greatest ideas have already been thought of by the great thinkers of the past; Marx, Freud, Einstein, etc. There is not much more to think ideas about since a lot of the ideas have already been introduced to the world.
Gabler did a great job of portraying his ideas about making and using ideas into this great article. I enjoyed reading this and look forward to the next piece of reading we do.
Taso, the point you make in your second paragraph really made me think. Of course, we like to think that we're smarter than what we were, but I disagree with that as well. Back then, it really was an age of discovery, and discovery doesn't just happen on its own. It requires a lot of intellect and creativity, and if we're not discovering things as fast as we were then we are simply not as smart or creative as our forebears. I think if we were to switch time periods with the people of the world from back then, we would only just be discovering computers now.
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