Age of Commodified Intelligence

New York Times, March 23, 2009, 5:13 am 

An ‘Age of Commodified Intelligence’

Today’s idea: We are in an “age of commodified intelligence” — a time not of great enlightenment but of mere intellectual acquisition and credential-building lacking in deep understanding. 

Culture | The magazine Intelligent Life recently put forth the contrarian notion that we are in age not of dumbing down but of smartening up — an “age of mass intelligence” characterized by rises in attendance at museums, literary festivals, operas and so forth.

But now comes a reader’s contrarian argument to that contrarian argument: We are actually only in an “age of commodified intelligence” — a “time of conspicuously consumed high culture in which intellectual life is meticulously measured and branded” but generally without true appreciation, writes George Balgobin.

“Facebook is devoted to cataloguing this cultural rebirth,” he adds. “Here people curate their personas and project them at the world.” Yes, the lights are on, but is anybody home? [More Intelligent Life]

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/an-age-of-commodified-intelligence/?ex=1253419200&en=785d12f10c047ad3&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=BL-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M087-ROS-0309-L2&WT.mc_ev=click