Lions, And Tigers, And Bears, Oh My!

President Obama decides that digital distraction is a political issue. Is he kidding? We have a world in chaos — ecological mess, wars, a wounded economy, unemployment — and he decides to warn college seniors about overuse of shiny mobile devices?

via AFP

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

Obama, who uses the handful of Commencement addresses that he delivers each year to meditate on societal developments broader than the minutiae of everyday politics, warned the world was at a moment of “breathtaking change.”

“We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,” Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers.

“Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,” he said.

Did he say ‘none of which I know how to work’ as a claim of pride? Or is he admitting to being out of step with the young people who voted for him? That he’s a luddite?

Please ignore him kids, he needs to get back on his blackberry more often.

This is the war on flow again, and now the president is saying that what we are up to is bad, because our connectedness — he thinks — makes us easier to control. But the opposite is true. He should be howling about television, I think.