We want information (in a hurry), not ideas

Lots of reaction to Neal Gabler's NYT essay on the post-idea world - a world, he argues, that minimizes most anything that can't be summed up in a few words or readily monetized. "Bold ideas are almost passé," writes Gabler, a senior fellow at USC's Annenberg Norman Lear Center. Here's his key point:

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock -- to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief. But post-Enlightenment and post-idea, while related, are not exactly the same. Post-Enlightenment refers to a style of thinking that no longer deploys the techniques of rational thought. Post-idea refers to thinking that is no longer done, regardless of the style.

Gabler's premise does wobble a bit, especially the notion that "We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value." Not necessarily - one doesn't always exclude the other. He's especially harsh on social networking, which is way too textured to be cast off as some frivolous pursuit. Okay, so at times the guy sounds like a snobby old fart. But he finishes with this:

We have become information narcissists, so uninterested in anything outside ourselves and our friendship circles or in any tidbit we cannot share with those friends that if a Marx or a Nietzsche were suddenly to appear, blasting his ideas, no one would pay the slightest attention, certainly not the general media, which have learned to service our narcissism. What the future portends is more and more information -- Everests of it. There won't be anything we won't know. But there will be no one thinking about it.

Agree, disagree - the argument is thought-provoking. So what's the first headline I come across in response to the piece?

Some Old Guy Can't Come Up With Any New Ideas; So He Says There Are No New Ideas & It's Twitter's Fault