The 5 Stages of Sleep.

There are 5 stages of sleep that SHOULD cycle through 5 or 6 times throughout the night. Proper restful sleep will cycle through these 5 stages of sleep every 90 minutes throughout the night.

1.This 1st stage is characterized by a drowsy feeling rather than 'sleep'. It is definitely an integral part of the sleep process.
2. In the second stage of sleep ones awareness of the external environment slips away.
3. Stage Three is a transition into Stage 4's delta deep sleep.
4. Stage Four Delta Sleep is deep sleep, it is difficult to quickly awaken from Delta sleep.
5. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, associated with dreaming. REM sleep is most prevalent in the final third of a sleep period.

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* University of Chicago Researchers found that the first stage of age-related deterioration of sleep quality in men occurs between the ages of 25 and 45
o They're sleeping as long as younger men, but they're spending less time in restorative deep sleep, the scientists write in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
o The scientists studied 149 healthy men ages 16 to 83.
o Sleeping less deeply doesn't just mean that thirty something men might be more likely to be awakened by street noise outside the window. (This study did not find that more frequent awakenings during the night accompanied declines in deep sleep.)
o It also means that their bodies are secreting less growth hormone, the study found. In recent years, studies in the elderly have linked growth hormone deficiency to increased obesity, loss of muscle mass and reduced exercise capacity.


1


Stage 1 is the gateway between waking consciousness and sleeping unconsciousness. As we fall asleep, yawn.

a In the second stage of sleep ones awareness of the external environment slips away.
b Stage 2 occupies 45-55% of total sleep.


2

Stage Three is a transition into Stage 4's delta deep sleep.

a Heart rate slows, respirations slow, brain waves slow.
b Less than 10% of total sleep.

3

Stage Four Delta Sleep is deep sleep, it is difficult to quickly awaken from Delta sleep. .

a Delta sleeps dominates the first third of the night and makes up about 10-15% of total sleep time.
b This is a period of intense but slow brain waves. Brain waves significantly slow
c Heart rate & respirations slow, the body becomes mostly immobile.
d It is during stages 3 and 4, or slow brain wave sleep, that growth hormone levels increase and changes in immune function occur.
e Delta Sleep could be considered the anabolic part of sleep. Delta Sleep is when growth and rejuvenation occurs. A period of rejuvenation for our muscular, immune, nervous and skeletal systems.
f This pre-dream state stage of sleep is the time when sleep walking occurs. In REM sleep skeletal muscles are frozen.


4

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, associated with dreaming. REM sleep is most prevalent in the final third of a sleep period. The nutrient GABA definitely increases REM Sleep.

a Predominates the late stages of sleep and can comprise up to 50% of the final 90 minute cycles.
b A period of very active brain activity, pulse rate increases & we lose the ability to use our skeletal muscles.
c REM sleep helps with the organization of memory.
c - 1 When you awaken with 'a problem solved' thank REM sleep's memory optimization process.
d REM sleep is the center piece of 20th century western psychiatry. Sigmund Freud's 'school of psychoanalysis' contends that dreams represent our frustrated desire

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Another University of Chicago study in 1999 by Dr. Eve Cauter limited a test group of men to only four hours of sleep per night for 2 weeks.

* The subjects showed decreased levels of Leptin and increased levels of Cortisol.
o There was a measurable loss in production of the positive hormone Leptin & an increase in the negative hormone Cortisol.
* The reduced sleep resulted in loss of the rejuvenation benefits of Delta & REM sleep.
o Non-REM sleep rejuvenates the parts of the body damaged by metabolism and free radicals,
o REM sleep repairs the repair center that rejuvenates the body during Delta Sleep..

Understanding Sleep, Part 1

Do you ever feel sleepy or "zone out" during the day? Do you find it hard to wake up on Monday mornings? If so, you are familiar with the powerful need for sleep. However, you may not realize that sleep is as essential for your well-being as food and water. This first part focuses on our biological needs for sleep


Sleep: A Dynamic Activity

Until the 1950s, most people thought of sleep as a passive, dormant part of our daily lives. We now know that our brains are very active during sleep. Moreover, sleep affects our daily functioning and our physical and mental health in many ways that we are just beginning to understand.

Nerve-signaling chemicals called neurotransmitters control whether we are asleep or awake by acting on different groups of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. Neurons in the brainstem, which connects the brain with the spinal cord, produce neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine that keep some parts of the brain active while we are awake. Other neurons at the base of the brain begin signaling when we fall asleep. These neurons appear to "switch off" the signals that keep us awake. Research also suggests that a chemical called adenosine builds up in our blood while we are awake and causes drowsiness. This chemical gradually breaks down while we sleep.

During sleep, we usually pass through five phases of sleep: stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. These stages progress in a cycle from stage 1 to REM sleep, then the cycle starts over again with stage 1. We spend almost 50 percent of our total sleep time in stage 2 sleep, about 20 percent in REM sleep, and the remaining 30 percent in the other stages. Infants, by contrast, spend about half of their sleep time in REM sleep.

During stage 1, which is light sleep, we drift in and out of sleep and can be awakened easily. Our eyes move very slowly and muscle activity slows. People awakened from stage 1 sleep often remember fragmented visual images. Many also experience sudden muscle contractions called hypnic myoclonia, often preceded by a sensation of starting to fall. These sudden movements are similar to the "jump" we make when startled. When we enter stage 2 sleep, our eye movements stop and our brain waves (fluctuations of electrical activity that can be measured by electrodes) become slower, with occasional bursts of rapid waves called sleep spindles. In stage 3, extremely slow brain waves called delta waves begin to appear, interspersed with smaller, faster waves. By stage 4, the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. It is very difficult to wake someone during stages 3 and 4, which together are called deep sleep. There is no eye movement or muscle activity. People awakened during deep sleep do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes after they wake up. Some children experience bedwetting, night terrors, or sleepwalking during deep sleep.

When we switch into REM sleep, our breathing becomes more rapid, irregular, and shallow, our eyes jerk rapidly in various directions, and our limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed. Our heart rate increases, our blood pressure rises, and males develop penile erections. When people awaken during REM sleep, they often describe bizarre and illogical tales — dreams.

The first REM sleep period usually occurs about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. A complete sleep cycle takes 90 to 110 minutes on average. The first sleep cycles each night contain relatively short REM periods and long periods of deep sleep. As the night progresses, REM sleep periods increase in length while deep sleep decreases. By morning, people spend nearly all their sleep time in stages 1, 2, and REM.

People awakened after sleeping more than a few minutes are usually unable to recall the last few minutes before they fell asleep. This sleep-related form of amnesia is the reason people often forget telephone calls or conversations they've had in the middle of the night. It also explains why we often do not remember our alarms ringing in the morning if we go right back to sleep after turning them off.

Since sleep and wakefulness are influenced by different neurotransmitter signals in the brain, foods and medicines that change the balance of these signals affect whether we feel alert or drowsy and how well we sleep. Caffeinated drinks such as coffee and drugs such as diet pills and decongestants stimulate some parts of the brain and can cause insomnia, or an inability to sleep. Many antidepressants suppress REM sleep. Heavy smokers often sleep very lightly and have reduced amounts of REM sleep. They also tend to wake up after 3 or 4 hours of sleep due to nicotine withdrawal. Many people who suffer from insomnia try to solve the problem with alcohol — the so-called night cap. While alcohol does help people fall into light sleep, it also robs them of REM and the deeper, more restorative stages of sleep. Instead, it keeps them in the lighter stages of sleep, from which they can be awakened easily.

People lose some of the ability to regulate their body temperature during REM, so abnormally hot or cold temperatures in the environment can disrupt this stage of sleep. If our REM sleep is disrupted one night, our bodies don't follow the normal sleep cycle progression the next time we doze off. Instead, we often slip directly into REM sleep and go through extended periods of REM until we "catch up" on this stage of sleep.

People who are under anesthesia or in a coma are often said to be asleep. However, people in these conditions cannot be awakened and do not produce the complex, active brain wave patterns seen in normal sleep. Instead, their brain waves are very slow and weak, sometimes all but undetectable.

How Much Sleep Do We Need?

The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. Infants generally require about 16 hours a day, while teenagers need about 9 hours on average. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don't seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need; while we may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.

People tend to sleep more lightly and for shorter time spans as they get older, although they generally need about the same amount of sleep as they needed in early adulthood. About half of all people over 65 have frequent sleeping problems, such as insomnia, and deep sleep stages in many elderly people often become very short or stop completely. This change may be a normal part of aging, or it may result from medical problems that are common in elderly people and from the medications and other treatments for those problems.

Experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day, even during boring activities, you haven't had enough sleep. If you routinely fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying down, you probably have severe sleep deprivation, possibly even a sleep disorder. Microsleeps, or very brief episodes of sleep in an otherwise awake person, are another mark of sleep deprivation. In many cases, people are not aware that they are experiencing microsleeps. The widespread practice of "burning the candle at both ends" in western industrialized societies has created so much sleep deprivation that what is really abnormal sleepiness is now almost the norm.

Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous. Sleep-deprived people who are tested by using a driving simulator or by performing a hand-eye coordination task perform as badly as or worse than those who are intoxicated. Sleep deprivation also magnifies alcohol's effects on the body, so a fatigued person who drinks will become much more impaired than someone who is well-rested. Driver fatigue is responsible for an estimated 100,000 motor vehicle accidents and 1500 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since drowsiness is the brain's last step before falling asleep, driving while drowsy can – and often does – lead to disaster. Caffeine and other stimulants cannot overcome the effects of severe sleep deprivation. The National Sleep Foundation says that if you have trouble keeping your eyes focused, if you can't stop yawning, or if you can't remember driving the last few miles, you are probably too drowsy to drive safely.


What Does Sleep Do For Us?

Although scientists are still trying to learn exactly why people need sleep, animal studies show that sleep is necessary for survival. For example, while rats normally live for two to three years, those deprived of REM sleep survive only about 5 weeks on average, and rats deprived of all sleep stages live only about 3 weeks. Sleep-deprived rats also develop abnormally low body temperatures and sores on their tail and paws. The sores may develop because the rats' immune systems become impaired. Some studies suggest that sleep deprivation affects the immune system in detrimental ways.

Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate the next day. It also leads to impaired memory and physical performance and reduced ability to carry out math calculations. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Some experts believe sleep gives neurons used while we are awake a chance to shut down and repair themselves. Without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with byproducts of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction. Sleep also may give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity.

Deep sleep coincides with the release of growth hormone in children and young adults. Many of the body's cells also show increased production and reduced breakdown of proteins during deep sleep. Since proteins are the building blocks needed for cell growth and for repair of damage from factors like stress and ultraviolet rays, deep sleep may truly be "beauty sleep." Activity in parts of the brain that control emotions, decision-making processes, and social interactions is drastically reduced during deep sleep, suggesting that this type of sleep may help people maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while they are awake. A study in rats also showed that certain nerve-signaling patterns which the rats generated during the day were repeated during deep sleep. This pattern repetition may help encode memories and improve learning.

Dreaming and REM Sleep

We typically spend more than 2 hours each night dreaming. Scientists do not know much about how or why we dream. Sigmund Freud, who greatly influenced the field of psychology, believed dreaming was a "safety valve" for unconscious desires. Only after 1953, when researchers first described REM in sleeping infants, did scientists begin to carefully study sleep and dreaming. They soon realized that the strange, illogical experiences we call dreams almost always occur during REM sleep. While most mammals and birds show signs of REM sleep, reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not.

REM sleep begins with signals from an area at the base of the brain called the pons. These signals travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis of the limb muscles. If something interferes with this paralysis, people will begin to physically "act out" their dreams — a rare, dangerous problem called REM sleep behavior disorder. A person dreaming about a ball game, for example, may run headlong into furniture or blindly strike someone sleeping nearby while trying to catch a ball in the dream.

REM sleep stimulates the brain regions used in learning. This may be important for normal brain development during infancy, which would explain why infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults. Like deep sleep, REM sleep is associated with increased production of proteins. One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned after sleeping, while people deprived of REM sleep could not.

Some scientists believe dreams are the cortex's attempt to find meaning in the random signals that it receives during REM sleep. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness. It may be that, given random signals from the pons during REM sleep, the cortex tries to interpret these signals as well, creating a "story" out of fragmented brain activity.

Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

Circadian rhythms are regular changes in mental and physical characteristics that occur in the course of a day (circadian is Latin for "around a day"). Most circadian rhythms are controlled by the body's biological "clock." This clock, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN, is actually a pair of pinhead-sized brain structures that together contain about 20,000 neurons. The SCN rests in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, just above the point where the optic nerves cross. Light that reaches photoreceptors in the retina (a tissue at the back of the eye) creates signals that travel along the optic nerve to the SCN.

Signals from the SCN travel to several brain regions, including the pineal gland, which responds to light-induced signals by switching off production of the hormone melatonin. The body's level of melatonin normally increases after darkness falls, making people feel drowsy. The SCN also governs functions that are synchronized with the sleep/wake cycle, including body temperature, hormone secretion, urine production, and changes in blood pressure.

By depriving people of light and other external time cues, scientists have learned that most people's biological clocks work on a 25-hour cycle rather than a 24-hour one. But because sunlight or other bright lights can reset the SCN, our biological cycles normally follow the 24-hour cycle of the sun, rather than our innate cycle. Circadian rhythms can be affected to some degree by almost any kind of external time cue, such as the beeping of your alarm clock, the clatter of a garbage truck, or the timing of your meals. Scientists call external time cues zeitgebers (German for "time givers").

When travelers pass from one time zone to another, they suffer from disrupted circadian rhythms, an uncomfortable feeling known as jet lag. For instance, if you travel from California to New York, you "lose" 3 hours according to your body's clock. You will feel tired when the alarm rings at 8 a.m. the next morning because, according to your body's clock, it is still 5 a.m. It usually takes several days for your body's cycles to adjust to the new time.

To reduce the effects of jet lag, some doctors try to manipulate the biological clock with a technique called light therapy. They expose people to special lights, many times brighter than ordinary household light, for several hours near the time the subjects want to wake up. This helps them reset their biological clocks and adjust to a new time zone.

Symptoms much like jet lag are common in people who work nights or who perform shift work. Because these people's work schedules are at odds with powerful sleep-regulating cues like sunlight, they often become uncontrollably drowsy during work, and they may suffer insomnia or other problems when they try to sleep. Shift workers have an increased risk of heart problems, digestive disturbances, and emotional and mental problems, all of which may be related to their sleeping problems. The number and severity of workplace accidents also tend to increase during the night shift. Major industrial accidents attributed partly to errors made by fatigued night-shift workers include the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plant accidents. One study also found that medical interns working on the night shift are twice as likely as others to misinterpret hospital test records, which could endanger their patients. It may be possible to reduce shift-related fatigue by using bright lights in the workplace, minimizing shift changes, and taking scheduled naps.

Many people with total blindness experience life-long sleeping problems because their retinas are unable to detect light. These people have a kind of permanent jet lag and periodic insomnia because their circadian rhythms follow their innate cycle rather than a 24-hour one. Daily supplements of melatonin may improve night-time sleep for such patients. However, since the high doses of melatonin found in most supplements can build up in the body, long-term use of this substance may create new problems. Because the potential side effects of melatonin supplements are still largely unknown, most experts discourage melatonin use by the general public.

Part 2 addresses sleep disorders.

This document appears courtesty of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Sleep and Disease

Sleep and sleep-related problems play a role in a large number of human disorders and affect almost every field of medicine. For example, problems like stroke and asthma attacks tend to occur more frequently during the night and early morning, perhaps due to changes in hormones, heart rate, and other characteristics associated with sleep. Sleep also affects some kinds of epilepsy in complex ways. REM sleep seems to help prevent seizures that begin in one part of the brain from spreading to other brain regions, while deep sleep may promote the spread of these seizures. Sleep deprivation also triggers seizures in people with some types of epilepsy.

Neurons that control sleep interact closely with the immune system. As anyone who has had the flu knows, infectious diseases tend to make us feel sleepy. This probably happens because cytokines, chemicals our immune systems produce while fighting an infection, are powerful sleep-inducing chemicals. Sleep may help the body conserve energy and other resources that the immune system needs to mount an attack.

Sleeping problems occur in almost all people with mental disorders, including those with depression and schizophrenia. People with depression, for example, often awaken in the early hours of the morning and find themselves unable to get back to sleep. The amount of sleep a person gets also strongly influences the symptoms of mental disorders. Sleep deprivation is an effective therapy for people with certain types of depression, while it can actually cause depression in other people. Extreme sleep deprivation can lead to a seemingly psychotic state of paranoia and hallucinations in otherwise healthy people, and disrupted sleep can trigger episodes of mania (agitation and hyperactivity) in people with manic depression.

Sleeping problems are common in many other disorders as well, including Alzheimer's disease, stroke, cancer, and head injury. These sleeping problems may arise from changes in the brain regions and neurotransmitters that control sleep, or from the drugs used to control symptoms of other disorders. In patients who are hospitalized or who receive round-the-clock care, treatment schedules or hospital routines also may disrupt sleep. The old joke about a patient being awakened by a nurse so he could take a sleeping pill contains a grain of truth. Once sleeping problems develop, they can add to a person's impairment and cause confusion, frustration, or depression. Patients who are unable to sleep also notice pain more and may increase their requests for pain medication. Better management of sleeping problems in people who have other disorders could improve these patients' health and quality of life.

Sleep Disorders

At least 40 million Americans each year suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems. These disorders and the resulting sleep deprivation interfere with work, driving, and social activities. They also account for an estimated $16 billion in medical costs each year, while the indirect costs due to lost productivity and other factors are probably much greater. Doctors have described more than 70 sleep disorders, most of which can be managed effectively once they are correctly diagnosed. The most common sleep disorders include insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and narcolepsy.

Insomnia

Almost everyone occasionally suffers from short-term insomnia. This problem can result from stress, jet lag, diet, or many other factors. Insomnia almost always affects job performance and well-being the next day. About 60 million Americans a year have insomnia frequently or for extended periods of time, which leads to even more serious sleep deficits. Insomnia tends to increase with age and affects about 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men. It is often the major disabling symptom of an underlying medical disorder.

For short-term insomnia, doctors may prescribe sleeping pills. Most sleeping pills stop working after several weeks of nightly use, however, and long-term use can actually interfere with good sleep. Mild insomnia often can be prevented or cured by practicing good sleep habits (see "Tips for a Good Night's Sleep"). For more serious cases of insomnia, researchers are experimenting with light therapy and other ways to alter circadian cycles.

Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a disorder of interrupted breathing during sleep. It usually occurs in association with fat buildup or loss of muscle tone with aging. These changes allow the windpipe to collapse during breathing when muscles relax during sleep. This problem, called obstructive sleep apnea, is usually associated with loud snoring (though not everyone who snores has this disorder). Sleep apnea also can occur if the neurons that control breathing malfunction during sleep.

During an episode of obstructive apnea, the person's effort to inhale air creates suction that collapses the windpipe. This blocks the air flow for 10 seconds to a minute while the sleeping person struggles to breathe. When the person's blood oxygen level falls, the brain responds by awakening the person enough to tighten the upper airway muscles and open the windpipe. The person may snort or gasp, then resume snoring. This cycle may be repeated hundreds of times a night. The frequent awakenings that sleep apnea patients experience leave them continually sleepy and may lead to personality changes such as irritability or depression. Sleep apnea also deprives the person of oxygen, which can lead to morning headaches, a loss of interest in sex, or a decline in mental functioning. It also is linked to high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, and an increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. Patients with severe, untreated sleep apnea are two to three times more likely to have automobile accidents than the general population. In some high-risk individuals, sleep apnea may even lead to sudden death from respiratory arrest during sleep.

An estimated 18 million Americans have sleep apnea. However, few of them have had the problem diagnosed. Patients with the typical features of sleep apnea, such as loud snoring, obesity, and excessive daytime sleepiness, should be referred to a specialized sleep center that can perform a test called polysomnography. This test records the patient's brain waves, heartbeat, and breathing during an entire night. If sleep apnea is diagnosed, several treatments are available. Mild sleep apnea frequently can be overcome through weight loss or by preventing the person from sleeping on his or her back. Other people may need special devices or surgery to correct the obstruction. People with sleep apnea should never take sedatives or sleeping pills, which can prevent them from awakening enough to breathe.

Restless Legs Syndrome

Restless legs syndrome (RLS), a familial disorder causing unpleasant crawling, prickling, or tingling sensations in the legs and feet and an urge to move them for relief, is emerging as one of the most common sleep disorders, especially among older people. This disorder, which affects as many as 12 million Americans, leads to constant leg movement during the day and insomnia at night. Severe RLS is most common in elderly people, though symptoms may develop at any age. In some cases, it may be linked to other conditions such as anemia, pregnancy, or diabetes.

Many RLS patients also have a disorder known as periodic limb movement disorder or PLMD, which causes repetitive jerking movements of the limbs, especially the legs. These movements occur every 20 to 40 seconds and cause repeated awakening and severely fragmented sleep. In one study, RLS and PLMD accounted for a third of the insomnia seen in patients older than age 60.

RLS and PLMD often can be relieved by drugs that affect the neurotransmitter dopamine, suggesting that dopamine abnormalities underlie these disorders' symptoms. Learning how these disorders occur may lead to better therapies in the future.

Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy affects an estimated 250,000 Americans. People with narcolepsy have frequent "sleep attacks" at various times of the day, even if they have had a normal amount of night-time sleep. These attacks last from several seconds to more than 30 minutes. People with narcolepsy also may experience cataplexy (loss of muscle control during emotional situations), hallucinations, temporary paralysis when they awaken, and disrupted night-time sleep. These symptoms seem to be features of REM sleep that appear during waking, which suggests that narcolepsy is a disorder of sleep regulation. The symptoms of narcolepsy typically appear during adolescence, though it often takes years to obtain a correct diagnosis. The disorder (or at least a predisposition to it) is usually hereditary, but it occasionally is linked to brain damage from a head injury or neurological disease.

Once narcolepsy is diagnosed, stimulants, antidepressants, or other drugs can help control the symptoms and prevent the embarrassing and dangerous effects of falling asleep at improper times. Naps at certain times of the day also may reduce the excessive daytime sleepiness.

In 1999, a research team working with canine models identified a gene that causes narcolepsy—a breakthrough that brings a cure for this disabling condition within reach. The gene, hypocretin receptor 2, codes for a protein that allows brain cells to receive instructions from other cells. The defective versions of the gene encode proteins that cannot recognize these messages, perhaps cutting the cells off from messages that promote wakefulness. The researchers know that the same gene exists in humans, and they are currently searching for defective versions in people with narcolepsy.

The Future

Sleep research is expanding and attracting more and more attention from scientists. Researchers now know that sleep is an active and dynamic state that greatly influences our waking hours, and they realize that we must understand sleep to fully understand the brain. Innovative techniques, such as brain imaging, can now help researchers understand how different brain regions function during sleep and how different activities and disorders affect sleep. Understanding the factors that affect sleep in health and disease also may lead to revolutionary new therapies for sleep disorders and to ways of overcoming jet lag and the problems associated with shift work. We can expect these and many other benefits from research that will allow us to truly understand sleep's impact on our lives.

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The Sleep of Reason, Part I

Michael Gorman - June 11th, 2007

The life of the mind in the age of Web 2.0 suffers, in many ways, from an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise. Bloggers are called “citizen journalists”; alternatives to Western medicine are increasingly popular, though we can thank our stars there is no discernable “citizen surgeon” movement; millions of Americans are believers in Biblical inerrancy—the belief that every word in the Bible is both true and the literal word of God, something that, among other things, pits faith against carbon dating; and, scientific truths on such matters as medical research, accepted by all mainstream scientists, are rejected by substantial numbers of citizens and many in politics.

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s Dr. Nathan Null, “a White House Situational Science Adviser,” tells us that: “Situational science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts.” This is satire, of course, but hardly too broad in a time when school boards aim “intelligent design” (creationism with lipstick on) at the minds of schoolchildren and powerful interests deny the very existence of catastrophic human-caused global climate change. These are evidence of a tide of credulity and misinformation that can only be countered by a culture of respect for authenticity and expertise in all scholarly, research, and educational endeavors.

The Spanish artist Goya (1746-182 experienced the turmoil of the Napoleonic years and the war that ravaged Europe, including Spain. His vision included a private world of nightmares. One of the most famous products of this vision was the etching Number 43 of the series Los caprichos (The Caprices, 1799); the etching is called El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos (”The sleep of reason brings forth monsters”). Goya is widely credited with having the clairvoyance of genius, and this image of the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason has been seen as a prediction of, and warning about, the state of civilization in the two hundred years since.

I know about this etching partly because I read about it decades ago and partly because I recently went to authoritative printed sources for confirmation of what I had read and for additional information and insights. These reference works were not only created by scholars and published by reputable publishers but also contained the paratextual elements (subject headings, indexes, bibliographies, content lists, etc.) also created by professionals that enabled me to find the recorded knowledge and information I wanted in seconds.

This small example typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter. The difference is not, emphatically not, in the communication technology involved. Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in expertise. The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print.

Human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways. They learn from experience—the oldest and earliest type of learning—and they learn from people who know more than they do. The second kind of learning comes from either personal contact with living people—teachers, gurus, etc.—or through interaction with the human record, that vast assemblage of texts, images, and symbolic representations that have come to us from the past and is being added to in the present. It is this latter way of learning that is under threat in the realm of digital resources.

It is under threat because, to be successful, it depends on the authenticity of the connection between the teacher/researcher/author who has created a part of the human record and the person who wishes to learn from the study of that part. That connection is authentic only if certain conditions are met. The conditions necessary for learning from a text include a reasonable certainty that the text is what it says it is—that its content is what was created by a named person or persons or is a good-faith translation of that original text by a named person or persons; that the authors possess verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise; that the learner has knowledge of the date when that text was created and can, therefore, take into account any later developments or discoveries; that the learner possesses the reading skills to interact productively with a complex text; and that the text has a context—that is, its relationships with other texts are set out in the form of citations and bibliographic references. If one thinks of such a learning transaction in terms of someone reading, say, a paper in the proceedings of a scholarly conference, a paper in a scholarly journal, or an article in an authoritative encyclopedia, it is easy to see not only that each of these conditions can and do exist in a print culture but that they could and, in some cases, do exist in the digital world.

But there are obstacles to such a benign outcome, and I’ll tackle these obstacles in Part II of this blog .


98 Responses to “The Sleep of Reason, Part I”

1. Pattern Recognition » Gorman, again Says:
June 12th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

[…] Karen Schneider twittered the latest Michael Gorman insanity, written on (no surprise here) the Britannica Blog. Long time readers of this blog might remember that I’ve publicly disagreed with Gorman on a number of things, and this latest rant isn’t any different. […]

2. Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Respect my Authority Says:
June 12th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

[…] When I read Michael Gorman’s two-part blog post (yes, I said blog post; if that isn’t the height of irony…) to respect the wisdom of the expert over the wisdom of the crowd, I thought of two people: Ayn Rand and Eric Cartman. The piece had all of Ayn Rand’s black-and-white, either-or thinking as well as her use of hyperbole. I’ll let the picture explain why I thought of Cartman. […]

3. the goblin in the library › Gorman With the Wind Says:
June 12th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

[…] The biggest irony in Michael Gorman’s two-part blog post entitled “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason” (part I and part II) is that he clearly doesn’t understand how the internet (including, but in no way limited to, Wikipedia) works, or he’s willfully misrepresenting how it works in order to make his point. Whichever the case, it means that he’s not an authoritative, reliable source, and his writings on the matter cannot be trusted. […]

4. Dean Giustini Says:
June 12th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

I think “the life of the mind” suffers under Michael Gorman. Your argument(s) would have greater force if you would deign to use some concrete examples. Your younger colleagues (such as those who commented before me) are bloggers with interesting points to make and share with their colleagues - is that why we are suffering so? In the case of Ms. Farkas, she has published a book of ideas, all from her own perspective. Why not avoid the generalizations and stop writing ‘for effect’. It was fine when you were ALA President, but it’s worn thin.

5. Lee LeBlanc Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 6:22 am

Perhaps be more open to how people really use information & accept the imperfection of information use.

6. A Blog from Britannica Should Know Better (or, Gorman is blogging?) : David Lee King Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 8:25 am

[…] So… MG is blogging. (Reader: Hmm… didn’t he coin the term “blog people” a couple years ago about those people who “read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them… ?” David: Yep. Same dude.). Upon first read, I wanted to pick apart his two posts bit by bit. And then it dawned on me - I don’t have to. Instead, I can complain about the Britannica Blog! […]

7. Gorman vs. the straw-people « John Miedema Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 9:07 am

[…] June 13th, 2007 This week Michael Gorman posted an article in the Britannica Blog: Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I and Part 2. Thanks Jessamyn West. […]

8. Many-to-Many Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 9:09 am

Old Revolutions Good, New Revolutions Bad: A Response to Gorman

Encyclopedia Britannica has started a Web 2.0 Forum, where they are hosting a conversation going on around a set of posts by Michael Gorman. The first post, in two parts, is titled Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth…

9. Sridhar Vembu Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 10:33 am

I will agree about 80% with you, with some caveats when you refer to (unnamed) “alternatives to western medicine”. It is not clear which “alternatives” you are referring to (is Yoga one of them?), but everything in that vast universe is not junk. In fact, we are starting to realize there is some wisdom in many of the older schools of the east.

10. LibrarySupportStaff.Org » Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Reason Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

[…] Michael Gorman, former president of ALA, has riled up some people with his posts on Britannica Blog titled Web 2.0 : The Sleep of Reason (part I) and (part II). […]

11. J Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

I find it ironic that Mr. Gorman chose a blog to post another one of his pompous, myopic rants about the evils of modern U.S. culture.

12. Boing Boing Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

Michael Gorman’s anti-Internet rant

Clay Shirky says: Over at the Britannica weblog, Michael Gorman, the former American Library Ass’n head, has an anti-internet rant entitled “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters”, to which a number of of us have now replied: “The succ…

13. John Edward Campbell Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

Just as ontogeny recapitulates philogeny, the social evolution of our species mocks the social evolution of the individual, sometimes cruelly. We are in the adolescent stage of our social evolution. We are desperate to be free from the authority that has ruled us since we became “civilized”. We also haven’t quite developed the social skills necessary to live our lives without conflict. We’re often angry, sometimes rude and spend way too much time thinking about sex. That’s what adolescents do. It’s also how they grow up to be responsible adults. It’s a constant struggle as we test our own abilities and evaluate the results. Throughout history, authoritarian figures have tried to cram us back into the nursery by legislating morality and suppressing creativity. Frankly, the idea that we can only learn from those who have been sanctified by self-serving certification boards or institutions of higher learning (or adolescent storage facilities, as I call them) is not that different from the idea that women need men to think for them or that it’s the role of white men to civilize the little, dark people. Although expertise is very welcome, self-appointed parents are not. We’re not going back to censorship, to legislated morality, to condescension and patronage. We will learn from our own experiences. We will make mistakes. But we will not go back.

14. Larry Tate Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

I started reading your link on ‘Goya’, then wanted to learn more about ‘aquatint’, but I had to sign up for a free trial…so I went to Wikipedia.

15. R.John Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Wikipedia allows for students to cut and paste entire articles into their reports and papers, this is quite an innovation to the old pen to paper plagerism that we used to do with the print verisons.

Thats the only innovation here.

16. Web 2.0 vs Michael Gorman « JPLL 2.0 Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

[…] Michael Gorman’s original posts […]

17. KipEsquire Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:51 pm

“we can thank our stars there is no discernable ‘citizen surgeon’ movement”

That is exactly the right observation, but for exactly the wrong reason.

It is precisely the fact that occupational journalists are not “professionals” on the same plane with physicians (or nurses, attorneys, veterinarians, accountants or even optometrists) that is finally being exposed by blogging.

Occupational journalists face no mandatory educational curricula. They face no licensing examinations, no continuing education requirements, and need not subscribe to any legally binding code of ethics.

The very fact that occupational journalists often cannot see the difference between a journalist and a surgeon is why they are increasingly being ignored. They are not credentialed — and it drives them batty that laypersons no longer see any need afford them the respect that they afford the true (i.e., credentialed) professions.

Incidentally, are occupational librarians closer to occupational journalists or to professional physicians? The answer explains your rant.

18. Seth Finkelstein Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Surgery is rare and often scary - many people don’t like blood, while ranting is very easy. I think the better analogy is quack medicine, which has a lot of the same patterns - the same scamming appeal that YOU know better than the EXPERTS, the same substitution of good-tasting nonsense for plainer but substantial fare, the same problem that being taken in by it can be very dangerous to your health.

19. Jared Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

These 17 responses, many of them quite interesting could never happen if this blog post had been published in a journal.
With that being said I find it quite insincere to equate bloggers, and the youtube culture of today to creationists. A quick look at the top videos on youtube will show that Atheists, and Scientists resoundingly get the benefit of the doubt because they can back up their findings with science. The biggest threat to creationism is public dialog, and that’s not going to happen in print media, it will happen on the internet.

20. Mike not far from Portland Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

Now, does “the sleep of reason brings forth monsters” mean that when reason is asleep it brings forth monsters, or does it mean that reason itself is a sleep that brings forth monsters?

I’ve heard it quoted to support either interpretation.

Just asking.

21. Jeff Z Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

It strikes me that the reputations of those “authors possess[ing] verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise” would not suffer in the least bit if they were to publish their expert information online, with all available annotation, provenance and context, in competition with the “anarchic” sources of perhaps-not-so-well-pedigreed information currently extant.

I believe, in fact, that the inestimable quality of that vast body of canonical work would have the effect of providing a truly authoritative reference against which any other “wild” Internet source of information can be instantly checked and properly challenged if inaccurate.

Were encyclopediae not invented to allow the general population to access the sum of human knowledge (or at least as much as could be crammed into a set of books)?

I suspect the per-click advertising revenue on such a respected, non-controversial authoritative source would be rather staggering. Surely it wouldn’t take long for such experienced researchers to investigate that possibility?

Please try something new; the world still needs your authoritative knowledge, and you are in danger of losing the world’s interest at a time when you could instead be firing and feeding it. We want your expertise, please share it.

22. Brian Carnell Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 7:48 pm

It is fascinating that the beginning of Gorman’s essay ridicules Bibilical literalists, whereas the end asserts that only a certain priesthood of formalized academics are fit to interpret the various cultural texts he has in mind.

His take on creationism and global warming skepticism is fascinating, in that it quite clearly calls for individuals to abandon their own reasoning faculties in favor of simple blind obedience to this or that “expert.”

But, this is the problem, not the solution. I doubt many people who tell pollsters they don’t believe in evolution have ever extensively researched the topic themselves. Rather, they are taking their cues from others they recognize as authorities (typically religious in nature).

23. David HM Spector Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

How prescient:

“New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, ‘Why then are you not taking part in them?’”
–H. G. Wells

24. Nathan Jongewaard Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

Why is this essay being called “anti-internet” by Shirky via Boing-Boing? I have not found anything in Gorman’s piece that qualifies for that description. Criticism is not the same as condemnation. Gorman seems to suggest that there’s no reason the tools of the Web cannot be used creatively for the authoritative dissemination of information, simply that this is often not how they’re being used.

25. The Invisible Library » Blog Archive » Gorman Rants, Again Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

[…] Michael Gorman, self appointed Poobah of the Kranky Old Geezers of the Library World, has a new rant up about how the Internet and blogs are making us stupid at, of all places, the Britannica Blog. He starts off with a straw man so huge, the denizens of a small island off the coast of Scotland have already gathered around it, stuffed it with Edward Woodward and are fetching the torches as we speak: “The life of the mind in the age of Web 2.0 suffers, in many ways, from an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise. Bloggers are called ‘citizen journalists’; alternatives to Western medicine are increasingly popular, though we can thank our stars there is no discernable ‘citizen surgeon’ movement; millions of Americans are believers in Biblical inerrancy—the belief that every word in the Bible is both true and the literal word of God, something that, among other things, pits faith against carbon dating; and, scientific truths on such matters as medical research, accepted by all mainstream scientists, are rejected by substantial numbers of citizens and many in politics. […]”

26. Seth Finkelstein Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:25 pm

@Nathan - It’s being called “anti-Internet” because the easiest way to discredit someone who doesn’t go along with the program is to paint them as being anti-technology. If being pro-technology equivalences to whatever brand of populist snake-oil the evangelist is peddling, then critics of the quackery can be dismissed as anti-technology.

27. Much food for thought from Britannica » mathewingram.com/work Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:26 pm

[…] Gorman’s post is a relatively long treatise on the shortcomings of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, looking at how it cheapens social discourse and results in a “flight from expertise” (much like Andrew Keen’s “cult of the amateur” — and Keen also shows up in the Britannica salon). I’m going to go back and read Gorman’s post as well in more depth, but if this kind of thing interests you at all, they’re probably both worth a read. society, Web2.0 | Share This | Related links […]

28. Teaching Better With Web 2.0 » Britannica vs. Web 2.0? Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:12 am

[…] I learned early on in this journey from men such as Will Richardson, Alan November, and David Warlick that this dichotomy is exactly what makes it so urgent to develop critical, responsible users, and to empower them with skills that are far from new, but all-to-often neglected. Keen’s fellow Britannica blogger, Michael Gorman (Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I and Part II), while an enthusiastic critic of Web 2.0, actually expresses a very similar perspective: “This small example typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter. The difference is not, emphatically not, in the communication technology involved. Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in expertise. The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print.” […]

29. John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » The Arrogant Imperium Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 4:07 am

[…] Leading the charge is Michael Gorman. In his posts, “The Sleep of Reason” (Part I and Part II), he cites: “…evidence of a tide of credulity and misinformation that can only be countered by a culture of respect for authenticity and expertise in all scholarly, research, and educational endeavors.” […]

30. Chrononautic Log 改 » Blog Archive » Civilization/Wales Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:17 am

[…] Various folks have linked to”The Sleep of Reason,” a post on the Brittanica blog (did you know Brittanica had a blog?) from conservative librarian Michael Gorman, in which he blames the participatory Internet (a.k.a. “Web 2.0″) for, among other things: an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise. Bloggers are called “citizen journalists”; alternatives to Western medicine are increasingly popular… millions of Americans are believers in Biblical inerrancy — the belief that every word in the Bible is both true and the literal word of God, something that, among other things, pits faith against carbon dating; and, scientific truths on such matters as medical research, accepted by all mainstream scientists, are rejected by substantial numbers of citizens and many in politics. […]

31. John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » The Cult of the Exepert Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 7:02 am

[…] And now Meredith Farkas has weighed in on Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Reason. She takes a potshot at the ‘Cult of the Expert’ (my own paraphrase). As she writes: “The main point where I disagree with Gorman is his idea that the expert is necessarily to be trusted.” […]

32. rushmc Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 10:54 am

The only real change here is that authority must now compete with everyone else, rather than holding a privileged position. The fact that it is floundering in many cases–some of which you cite–suggests to me more that authority is doing a very poor job than that it is inherently incapable of standing against the barbarians at the gate and needs to be propped up. Journalists are a perfect example of a category of expert that has squandered its claim to special legitimacy, and the limitations of “citizen journalists” may prove preferable to the cowardice and profit motive of the professionals.

33. The power and peril of blogs - Family Man Librarian Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 10:55 am

[…] Second, my general point here is, calm down folks and try to get some perspective! T. Scott Plutchak writes about this in his blog and combines this perspective with discussion of another controversial blog post by Michael Gorman. T. Scott’s tone is welcome. He also makes the following point: “We are really still at the very beginnings of figuring out the best ways to engage in discourse using all of these new tools.” […]

34. Smitherines Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 11:09 am

[…] Posted by smitherines on June 14th, 2007 Michael Gorman has just posted a couple of items to the Britannnica Blog which have generated a lot of comments. Here’s a link to the first one; at the bottom of it is a link to the sequel. He has some harsh things to say about the whole Web 2.0 concept and, on a first reading, I kept nodding Yes, Yes, I agree. Here’s one paragraph that really struck me: The flight from expertise is accompanied by the opposite of expertise—the phenomenon that Andrew Keen has called, in his new book of the same name, “the cult of the amateur.” This cult, says Keen, “worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone—even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us—can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” He is referring to the impulse behind Web 2.0, but his words have a wider resonance—a world in which everyone is an expert in a world devoid of expertise. […]

35. davidrothman.net » Blog Archive » Gormangate II and disagreeing with T. Scott Again Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

[…] Damn it. I was going to stay out of the discussion of Gormangate II (see this, this, this, this, and this, for examples) until I saw Scott’s post on the topic. […]

36. Trey Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

The main issue I see with the debate between the traditional, authoritative, hierarchical and controlled media sources such as the Britannica and the anarchic and grassroots efforts like the Wikipedia is this: there is definitely something to be said for the Britannica’s authenticity. If I read one thing in Wiki, and another thing in the Britannica, I am more likely to believe the Britannica. But *not always*. Let me give you a prime example. During my research on a discount brokerage in the US, the Britannica mentioned nothing about the scandal following a newly hired vice-president, when he was fired from his old company. Wikipedia went into great detail about the circumstances of the firing, the cultural background of what led to the man’s downfall, the background of his co-workers, the possibility that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and other data. In this case, the Wikipedia was more timely, more informed, and certainly more reliable for the information about the background of this new employee than the Britannica. The argument that because the masses are in control, chaos rules and nothing can be trusted is misleading at best. There is a germ of truth in it — do not believe everything you read. But that maxim also applies to the Britannica, and any other information source you use.

37. Oh Lady Who? « Linkadelica Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:38 pm

[…] It’s taken me three days to finish this post thanks to post-party exhaustion and my efforts to adapt to my daughter’s new day camp schedule, but I’m pretty sure all the cake has been scraped off the basement floor and I’m very grateful that it’s over for another year. Now I can not only manage to post this but hopefully find a few words later to say about Michael Gorman’s latest technophobic grumbles, about which I am fairly riled but looking forward to debunking. […]

38. Jill Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

Re Trey’s Comments:

Yes, the Britannica would not have information on the fired vice-president from the brokerage company, and probably never will have–or even try to have–coverage of this kind. This falls outside the realm of what most general interest encyclopedias would attempt to cover without transforming themselves into newspapers or weekly magazines.

This is part of the problem with calling Wikipedia an “encyclopedia.” I remember a year or so ago, during the gruesome beheadings of kidnapped civilians in Baghdad, that Wikipedia had biographies of those entirely unknown and tragic victims, all uploaded to Wikipedia within minutes of the news of their kidnapping or beheading. Some cite this response time as evidence of the beauty of “community-produced” work. Get real! Obviously the Wikipedia “writer” had simply cut and pasted this information from a traditional news service (the ones that Web 2.0 champions like to criticize) and slapped it up as a newly “written” “encyclopedia” entry.

This info might be useful, but let’s not call this “writing,” hail it as “citizen journalism.” Wikipedia may be useful in this crass way, but I hope Britannica and World Book and the like never stoop to such methods, to ripping off headlines of the moment to see a boost in their coverage.

Encyclopedias should be more thoughtful than this, offer more than this.

39. The Emperor's New Clothes Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

Kudos to Michael Gorman who has the courage to say that the emperor “hasn’t got anything on.”

40. Assault on “The Sleep of Reason” « Some Librarian Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:12 pm

[…] Assault on “The Sleep of Reason” Filed under: Uncategorized — scouthawk @ 9:53 pm Former ALA president Michael Gorman’s two-part post on the Britannica blog has incited a host of criticism from library and information professionals. Part one, titled “The Sleep of Reason,” argues the value of print resources over the “often-anarchic world of the Internet.” It’s hard not to miss the irony of Gorman using a blog to put forth his opinions, especially considering this. […]

41. Is "Web 2.0" Disaster? | BlogCascadia Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:30 pm

[…] But then along comes Michael Gorman with a piece he calls “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason.” In it, he argues that the whole idea behind Web 2.0, that the collective intelligence is better than that of the individual, is .. well .. bunk. Why do we care about this Gorman guy? Well, he is a past president of the American Library Association, has a list of credentials as long as your arm, and … gosh, he makes some good points. Plus, he’s not alone. […]

42. Michael Gorman, Fisher King « Karen Munro, E-Learning Librarian Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

[…] June 14th, 2007 at 10:40 pm (Uncategorized) Oh boy. […]

43. Derek White Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

We live in a world where information is no longer peer-reviewed or necessarily based on truth. Whether old dogs like Britannica like it or not, the most interesting and engaging memes will survive, regardless of validity. The double irony is that they are using a blog forum to bash blogs and “web 2.0″ (I mean, isn’t that term passé already?), and everyone, including me, that is responding to this are contributing to the value of this post by lashing back and linking to it. Bottom line: truth is boring.

44. down the drain « booktruck.org Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 12:20 am

[…] Everyone and everyone who blogs about libraries has been talking about Michael Gorman’s blazes on the Britannica blog, and about some weird public blog dissing at NASIG. Okaaay. I think it’s because it’s the same old debate, floated for the millionth time. […]

45. John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » Demolition Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 3:00 am

[…] A superb point-by-point demolition of Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Reason from Clay Shirky. […]

46. digital digs Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

port authority

Authority and expertise in a networked culture… it’s not a new problem. Wisdom of the crowd/ collective intelligence vs. individual genius? Sifting through all the dross, all the ideology, all the self-promotion, and all the poorly composed media. Y…

47. John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » El sueno de la razon produce monstruos Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

[…] Perhaps Michael Gorman and his ilk should remember that the big bad monsters go away when you wake up! […]

48. Digital Folklore « Tangier Sound Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

[…] Encyclopædia Britannica would have you think this is all new. The ink and paper monolith has launched a forum to discuss Web 2.0 (as if anybody on earth could telly what Web 2.0 is outside of a sales pitch) and they are taking a pretty gloomy stance on how the Internet is changing the way we access information. Articles like The Sleep of Reason and Digital Maoism paint a picture of mindless hordes gobbling down bad information and making it fact by sheer force of will. […]

49. library+instruction+technology » Everything is Miscellaneous… Says:
June 16th, 2007 at 9:11 am

[…] Yeah, I know his point is that our old school ways of applying control over the ones and zeros zipping around on the series of tubes is in the best interest of no one. I agree that users should be able to tag their content and share their knowledge online. I am a user of Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and many other digital disorder tools. I do my best to educate our students and faculty about these tools. However, I wish David would have thrown us a bone and commented somewhere in the book that librarians are finally getting on board. Most librarians will agree that our roles have evolved tremendously over the past few years. I know many are still focused on metadata, but that is a necessary evil when you are standing with one foot in the digital world and one foot in the print world. I would hazard to say that a fair number of academic librarians have embraced the new third order of order, okay may be not everyone . […]

50. John Unsworth Says:
June 16th, 2007 at 10:32 am

51. Trusting the experts « The Letter Z Says:
June 16th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

[…] Trusting the experts Published June 16th, 2007 Uncategorized Many bloggers in the past few days have been writing about Michael Gorman’s two recent pieces on the Encyclopedia Britannica blog (Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I and Part II). In these two rather incoherent posts, Gorman, who is perhaps best known as the blog-hating former president of the American Library Association, associates Web 2.0 with “an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise,” which he blames for such calamities as citizen journalism, Biblical literalism, and Wikipedia. […]

52. Bruce Sanders Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

Many of the replies to Michael Gorman’s blogposts are absolutely brilliant, but no one has mentioned the process that makes the wisdom of crowds possible. To understand why the wisdom of crowds works one must understand the process of natural selection. Without intelligence, natural selection can “design” the eye of an eagle, the wing of an albatross, and the perfect hydrodynamics of the dolphin. So too, without an expert, the amateur’s article can quickly be transformed via critique and revision into an article conveying expertise. Is this process perfect? No, it isn’t. But then neither is evolution. Hemorrhoids are an artifact of our transition to bipedalism. But given time, the results of natural selection processes can be amazing. So too, wikis can be erudite in the extreme. And alas, our experts aren’t gods and are subject to errors that are generally corrected much more slowly than by the natural selection process that takes advantage of the wisdom of crowds. Even worse, experts often become entrenched in a paradigm, incapable of admitting when they are wrong, and can be a detriment to the advance of knowledge. Max Planck summed this problem up nicely, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” It seems to me Max Planck had Michael Gorman’s number.

53. Andrew Anderson Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

Bruce Sanders is unconvincing, and experience with Wikipedia proves the opposite. Many of the writers Sanders praises merely cut and paste from the expert entries written for vetted publications, be it Britannica or Grove or from assorted other sources, but with one major difference–the piecemeal, patchwork result of the prose is deadly and inconsistent and lacking coherence. More problematic still is the credible lie or undetected apparent truth that is rampant in Wikipedia (I have a list of 111 articles containing these credible lies) and which continue to root and spread because the “wisdom of the crowd” is incapable of detecting the subterfuge or error.

And please don’t say that I have a responsibility to correct these known errors in Wikipedia. I have nothing of the sort–this frustration with Wikipedia and its “expert,” committed” adminsitrators is what convinced Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter to slam Wikipedia to the New York Times recently, figuratively throwing up and his arms and declaring, “Why bother to fix it? Some one will ‘fix’ it back.”

Wikipedia is interesting for what it is, but champions like Mr. Sanders, exhibiting all the prudence and circumspection of an ideologue or giddy convert, embarrass themselves–please, quit overselling your product. Accept it for what it is, and accept the need for experts and an expert-based production paradigm. Your zero-sum game is unnecessary–both paradigms (open and traditional) can, and should, exist in the 21st century.

54. GotzeBlogged » Canonicalization of Democracy? Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

[…] Also, there is an increasing amount of critique of Web 2.0, for example Michael Gorman’s (2007) Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters. Also: […]

55. Bruce Sanders Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

It would have been nice if Andrew Anderson had tried to understand my letter rather than just jump to a bunch of erroneous conclusions concerning what I said. My letter was a reply to Michael Gorman’s blog posts, and discussed the mechanism, natural selection, which makes it possible for “amateurs” to create articles that convey expertise. Little of what Mr. Anderson says has anything to do with what I said.
When he says that many of the writers I praise (I praised no writer or article in particular) merely cut and paste from expert entries, he does not even address much less undermine anything I wrote. Why? Because there are outstanding erudite articles in Wikipedia that don’t involve cutting and pasting from experts, and that exemplify the natural selection process I was discussing. If his argument is that all Wikipedia articles ultimately depend on experts as sources (and Wikipedia encourages its writers to cite their sources) then he needs to understand that articles by experts in authoritative encyclopedias also depend on other experts for their sources (and they usually cite them). If he is arguing against plagiarism, well I am against plagiarism too as is Wikipedia. Even so, plagiarism in and of itself says nothing about the veracity of a Wikipedia article and it certainly has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
Mr. Anderson then jumps to talking about credible lies and undetected apparent truths (an odd turn of phrase–I assume he means undetected errors). I admitted explicitly that the natural selection process is not perfect. In fact, to continue the evolution metaphor, parasites are an inevitable outcome of natural selection processes. They can never be completely eradicated nor can they dominate since they depend on their host for survival. So too, errors, willful or not, cannot be fully eradicated from nor can they dominate Wikipedia for Wikipedia to survive. But there is a lesson to be learned here about authoritative works as well. About a year ago a former student of mine was telling me about the Nature article that concluded that Wikipedia was about as good as Britannica on science articles. He then said something to me I thought was very profound. He said that when he reads a Wikipedia article he reads it with a critical eye, and when he sees something suspicious he looks at the article’s history or even goes to another source. However, he said when he reads a Britannica article he simply assumes it is correct. Thus, I would argue the errors in Britannica have the potential to be far more damaging than Wikipedia’s errors because people are far more apt to accept them without question.
Anderson then throws in a comment about Douglas Hofstadter being frustrated with Wikipedia. I can’t speak to his particular frustration, but it doesn’t undermine anything I wrote. The trend in Wikipedia is for articles to get better over time.
Finally, Mr. Anderson writes, “Accept it for what it is, and accept the need for experts and an expert-based production paradigm. Your zero-sum game is unnecessary–both paradigms (open and traditional) can, and should, exist in the 21st century.” Either he did not read my letter carefully or he does not know the meaning of “zero-sum game.” I agree that both paradigms (open and traditional) can, and should, exist in the 21st century, and I said nothing to suggest otherwise. I was not playing a zero-sum game. Michael Gorman however, does not appear to be so open minded.

56. Иван Бегтин | Критика социальных сетей. Web 2.0. Сон разума. Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 4:36 am

[…] На эту тему пишет Майкл Горман, декан библиотечных наук Калифорнийского государственного университета. В двух заметках Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part Ieng и Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part IIeng он хорошо описывает атаку “онлайнового коллективизма” на институты индивидуального обучения и возможные из этого проблемы. […]

57. Farkas / Gorman on authorahtay « Ghostfooting Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 10:10 am

[…] When I read Michael Gorman’s two-part blog post (yes, I said blog post; if that isn’t the height of irony…) to respect the wisdom of the expert over the wisdom of the crowd, I thought of two people: Ayn Rand and Eric Cartman. The piece had all of Ayn Rand’s black-and-white, either-or thinking as well as her use of hyperbole. I’ll let the picture explain why I thought of Cartman. […]

58. 240 Things » Hive mind and colony collapse disorder Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

[…] I just read about ‘Remaining Relevant Online” in Library Journal and I’m also thinking about Michael Gorman’s posts on the Britannica blog. I’m thinking about research, information finding, and credulity. Gorman’s reference to the “hive mind” (he references Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism writing) made me think about the article I read yesterday about the recent marked decline of honeybees. Nobody seems to know yet just what has caused tens of thousands of bee colonies to die off in the past year. For now it has been called “colony collapse disorder” and research is focusing on a variety of possible causes including mites, pesticides, and even cell phone signals. […]

59. τεχνοσοφια » Blog Archive » Yawn Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

[…] Goodness, why give the author the satisfaction of a response? It lends his or her points a certain credence that they would otherwise lack. This, my friends, is little more than the sound of irrelevance. It will pass in time. […]

60. Reading and snobbishness « I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them. Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

[…] This is mildly, but not completely, related to the current Michael Gorman/Britannica Blog librarian drama, which relates more to social information tools such as wikipedia, blogging, and citizen journalism. Unfortunately, the idea that academia knows best is not a new one: there are “Good” things to read and “Bad” things to read. “Good” things have been praised to the heavens by academics. “Bad” things are the books you’d hide from your high school English teacher […]

61. Web 2.0 good or bad? « Eric Jennings Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

[…] Web 2.0 good or bad? Posted June 20, 2007 Recently, Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association wrote a couple of blog pieces for Britannica Online called, “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason.” Here’s a quote which I think is especially appropriate for dissection: “This small example typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter. The difference is not, emphatically not, in the communication technology involved. Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in expertise. The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print.” […]

62. sobre a web 2.0 e os velhos do restelo « a caixa Says:
June 20th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

[…] Num outro artigo, “Web 2.0: the sleep of reason, part I“, referenciado por Keen (o hipertexto é uma coisa fantástica, não é?), encontrei o seguinte: […]

63. Daniel W. Drezner Says:
June 21st, 2007 at 2:52 pm

Name this blog phenomenon!

Apparently the Encyclopedia Brittanica now has a blog. Michael Gorman is using it to harumph at the myriad ways in which the Internet has destroyed all that is great and good in scholarship and high culture. His first post opens…

64. EdVentures in Technology » Diigo Links 06/22/2007 - The Online Predation and Blog-Bashing Edition Says:
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:52 pm

[…] Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part II - Britannica Blog Annotated […]

65. Lost in the Hive Mind | Power Webblog Says:
June 24th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

[…] Michael Gorman, in his first post in this forum, has given us an excellent description of a deepening divide in our culture, that between those who respect accomplishment and expertise and those who look for ways to avoid them. I would like to develop one or two of his points here, in perhaps a somewhat less temperate way. Inspired by the spectacle of the French Revolution, William Wordsworth wrote in The Prelude: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven! […]

66. Another important related debate rises … « Death to internal marketing Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 3:46 am

[…] Another important related debate rises … There has been an undercurrent of unease with web 2.0 and the social media/digital revolution. Nowhere (that I can find) is teh debate more compelling and well-put than Michael Gorman at Brittanica’s The Sleep of Reason. Andrew Keen tries to historicise Gormans posts parts I and II. […]

67. re: web 2.0: the sleep of reason « Ghostfooting Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 9:15 am

[…] woody evans opens his head « recent work re: web 2.0: the sleep of reason June 25th, 2007 I haven’t read every blog response to Michael Gorman’s recenttwo-parter about why Web 2.0 is bad for us (”It is this latter way of learning [learning through interaction with the human record, that vast assemblage of texts, images, and symbolic representations that have come to us from the past and is being added to in the present] that is under threat in the realm of digital resources.”)… but something immediately strikes me as wrong here… […]

68. Forget Library 2.0 « stanislaus law library Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

[…] Forget Library 2.0 I have been following with great interest. Michael Gorman’s rant concerning the cult of the amateur and the dumbing down of expertise. I find it interesting that an information professional would want to be in a high ivory tower of expertise and hoarding that expertise from the plebes. It seems counter intuitive. To catch up see Michael Gorman rant this is part 1 of 2 […]

69. Knowledge as a conversation | Everything is Miscellaneous Says:
June 27th, 2007 at 7:33 am

[…] Tim Spalding of LibraryThing posts the intro to a talk he gave at the ALA in which he takes on Michael Gorman’s trashing of Knowledge 2.0. Tim challenges Gorman’s starting point. Herewith that starting point: “Human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways. They learn from experience—the oldest and earliest type of learning—and they learn from people who know more than they do.” […]

70. Carol Says:
June 30th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

I’m going to repeat here what I’ve said on the other posts in this forum: just what a wonderful forum this has been, especially for anyone unfamiliar with the many serious issues at stake with our new technology.

One doesn’t have to agree with everything Gorman, Keen, or Mann argued - or argued by Battles, boyd, or Shirky on the other side - to glean the fact that serious issues do exist, serious debates deserve attention, and that the digital world is far from settled. Thanks to Britannica for highlighting these important issues. And thanks to the Chicago Tribune for bringing this forum to the public’s attention.

71. EdVentures in Technology » Michael Gorman’s Posts from the Ivory Tower Says:
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:38 pm

[…] I haven’t had an opportunity to read Keen’s book yet and no doubt I will however what really has my head spinning are the treatises posted by former American Library Association (ALA) president Michael Gorman on the Brittanica Blog: Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, part I, Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, part II and most recently, The Siren Song of the Internet, part I and The Siren Song of the Internet, part II. Ironic that he’s posting at all, given the way Gorman decries blogs and blogging. […]

72. MuseumLab » Blog Archive » Wisdom of Crowds Produces Monsters? Says:
July 4th, 2007 at 1:19 am

[…] Here is something to think about. […]

73. Participatory Radar: Sources and Links on my Radar this week : UberNoggin: Big Brains - Big Ideas Says:
July 4th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

[…] Britannica’s Latest Response to Wikipedia () It’s an incredible conversation with both sides launching against each other. Only if there were such involved debates over every participatory media form. […]

74. GoldMundus » La otra cara de la Web 2.0 Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 11:47 am

[…] La democratización digital que permite la Web 2.0 empieza a relativizar-se por personas y foros influyentes en el mundo de Internet. Hay quien llega a afirmar que esa Web 2.0 puede generar una desalfabetización masiva. Otros advierten de la manipulación a la que está expuesta esa democracia digitalizada. Y también hay quien considera que empiezan a destacar los intereses económicos más allá de la facilidad de intercambio que ofrecen las plataformas 2.0. […]

75. MediaChannel.org Says:
July 16th, 2007 at 11:38 am

[…] Consider Encyclopedia Britannica. The people there are seeing their core business, if not raison d’etre, come under challenge from the online world, most notably by Wikipedia. Never mind that those projects are extremely different; Britannica has gone on the attack, giving its new blog over to citizen-media critics, some of whom have independently discredited themselves to a large extent, and others whose arguments have been systematically pulled apart. (Michael Gorman’s “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters” and Clay Shirky’s rebuttal, “Old Revolutions, Good; New Revolutions, Bad” are a prime example of the latter.) […]

76. john Says:
July 17th, 2007 at 12:58 am

Just think: the called Web 2.0 it´s the preview of free start learning. It´s obvious that we can´t know if the information is right, but within the information we can look trough some other fonts and find the real truth. So what´s the problem of the Web 2.0? There´s no problem, it´s just the modern free abstract of ideas! Simply wonderfull, simply free!

77. Zeitgeist - too hot for Wikipedia? at HotnStinky Says:
July 18th, 2007 at 12:19 am

[…] See the movie’s page, and its sources to get a sense of where it’s coming from… I’m not much on 9/11 ‘conspiracies’ — not because I think such evil is beyond the present gang of murdering, torturing criminals, but because I simply do not believe the Cheney Administration could have pulled off such a dazzling, flawless operation. But Wikipedia’s apparent disregard for materials that are not rendered “notable” by recognition from “official” sources is troubling. At best, it betrays a tremendous insecurity about its status. By suggesting that online cinema is not significant, aren’t they reinforcing the position of the Michael Gormans of the world, that online resources are inherently inferior? […]

78. Anne Frank Was an Unpublished Citizen Journalist: A Response to Michael Gorman « Linkadelica Says:
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:34 pm

[…] This brings us to this persistently thorny issue of authority, which Michael Gorman seems to believe is primarily the province of books and librarians. I know this because I read it on the internet, and I had no trouble finding exactly the piece I needed instantly, using Google. As nice as it is of Mr. Gorman to worry that we may not be able to find the information we need online, I cannot help wondering by what standard he expects us to regard him as an expert on the on the internet. His expertise in many subjects is undeniable, among them libraries, librarianship, and cataloguing. I would not accept as an authority on the internet someone who has expressed his vehement antipathy for Google, Wikipedia, weblogs, and digitization while denying a bias, but I’m quite sure you are capable of forming your own opinion on that based on the evidence at hand. […]

79. Readers Edition » Bürgermedien: Ein Zwischenbericht Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 11:41 am

[…] Neue Dinge stoßen immer auf Gegenreaktionen. Manchmal erreichen einen diese in Form schlecht informierter, reaktionärer Angst und sogar Hass. Manchmal nehmen sie auch die Form ernsthafter Kritik an. Aber immer ist es wichtig, Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken. Welche Sorgen zeigen sich in der ernsthafteren Kritik? Unter anderem der Gedanke, dass massenhafter Amateurjournalismus zu einem Qualitätsverlust führen könnte. Betrachten wir die Encyclopedia Britannica. Die Leute dort sehen ihr Kerngeschäft, wenn nicht sogar ihren Lebensinhalt, durch die Onlinewelt in Frage gestellt, allen voran durch Wikipedia. Natürlich sind die beiden Projekte sehr verschieden; dennoch hat Britannica den Kampf aufgenommen, indem sie ihren neuen Blog in die Hände von Bürgermedienkritikern gegeben haben. Einige davon haben sich in hohem Maße selbst diskreditiert, die Argumente von anderen wurden systematisch zerlegt. (Michael Gorman’s “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters” und Clay Shirky’s Gegendarstellung, “Old Revolutions, Good; New Revolutions, Bad” sind erstklassige Beispiele.) Berechtigterweise hat die Kritik hat auch ethische Bedenken genannt. Sie führt an, dass die Standards traditioneller Medien – natürlich oft übertreten – dazu dienten, offenkundige Beeinflussung von Journalisten durch ihr Thema zu vermeiden. Wir kommen später dazu. […]

80. Britannica Blog Provokes Reader Engagement : The Engagement Principles Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 12:56 pm

[…] In this case, Brittanica’s wide-ranging blog includes some posts clearly designed to provoke engagement — challenging their readers with intellectually charged posts on controversial topics. […]

81. Chandler Writes. You Profit. / New Chandler Engagement Marketing Article Posted on Chief Marketer Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 1:14 pm

[…] My latest business blogging article for Chief Marketer takes a good look the Britannica Blog — a blog from a knowledge-based brand that’s existed since 1768. What’s newsworthy? Britannica wide-ranging blog posts articles designed to provoke engagement by challenging their readers on controversial topics. […]

82. dreamattack » links for 2007-08-05 Says:
August 5th, 2007 at 12:46 am

[…] Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I - Britannica Blog “The life of the mind in the age of Web 2.0 suffers, in many ways, from an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise.” (tags: articles web2.0 libraries internet culture) […]

83. Old Revolutions Good, New Revolutions Bad: A Response to Gorman | I Think Says:
August 27th, 2007 at 10:10 am

[…] […]

84. Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » Medios ciudadanos: un informe del progreso Medios ciudadanos: un informe del progreso Medios ciudadanos: un informe del progreso Medios ciudadanos: un informe del progreso Por Dan Gillmor Traduci Says:
August 27th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

[…] Considere la Encyclopedia Britannica. Las personas allí están viendo que su negocio principal, incluso su razón de ser, se enfrenta al desafío del mundo online, más notablemente de Wikipedia. No importa que estos proyectos sean extremadamente diferentes; Británica ha ido al ataque, regalando su nuevo blog a los críticos de los medios ciudadanos, algunos de los cuales en gran medida se han desacreditado a sí mismos de forma independiente, y otros cuyos argumentos han sido sistemáticamente destrozados (“Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters” de Michael Gorman y la impugnación de Clay Shirky “Old Revolutions, Good; New Revolutions, Bad” son un ejemplo de primera clase de lo último). […]

85. Overman’s Blog » The one where I avoid all the clever Scott titles Says:
September 5th, 2007 at 8:24 am

[…] According to Ridley Scott, the Internet and Mobile video are killing cinema. (Is anyone else sensing a pattern here?) If television didn’t do the deed,