Some Semi-deep Thoughts about Deep Reading

In one of my classes at the School of Informatics and Computing, IUPUI, students write final papers about an emerging information technology they can envision amplified in the future. Pick a technology; now imagine it times a million: Is it heaven, or hell? Some extreme characterization is important. Unless that vision elicits some deep hope or fear, the students have a hard time psyching themselves up for a respectably long paper—“long paper” meaning maybe 10 to 12 pages (half or a third what I would have written as a student 40 years ago). Most of their hopes and fears arise from tension between, on one hand, the power of technology to shape human behavior and experience and, on the other, their perception that “human nature” is immutable and cannot (or can only painfully) evolve to accommodate this technologically shaped behavior. Over the years, students have generally split 70:30 in choosing a heavenly or hellish technology. The young are usually