PEOPLE'S Daily created quite a stir last weekend among the general populace by using on one of its pages an online nonce word diaosi (meaning grassroots), which, at first glance, would strike the uninitiated as crudely obscene.

The last time the paper created a similar sensation was two years ago, when it took the revolutionary step of using, for the first time, a newfangled online coinage geili (to empower) in a report about provincial culture.

There are kudos for these moves, with some calling them proactive initiatives by the serious media to foster rapprochement with online users.

While the move can be variously interpreted, it does suggest the overwhelming momentum of online "culture."

That "culture" deserves to be highlighted because online reading is debasing our spiritual life.

As Wang Meng commented in his article "Browsing, reading and the quality of our spiritual life," (October 26, Wenhui Daily), easy access to information today is seriously compromising our ability to stay attentive, to say nothing of the ability of intense concentration that is the prerequisite for being engaged with any true work of ideas or art.

Wang was a renowned author and Minister of Culture from 1986 to 1989.

State of distraction

Information overload keeps browsers in a perpetual state of distraction, as they navigate the labyrinthine online world, their peace of mind forever forfeited.

"New electronic gadgets like computers and iPads are demanding less and less from the users. For the sake of sales, the operating systems of the new gadgets are fast gravitating towards the level of an idiot," Wang wrote.

"With just a few clicks, you have everything you need. How infinitely convenient and more comfortable than traditional book reading, with all the pains of consulting, referencing, book copying, rote-learning, scrutinizing, reviewing ...." added Wang.

I was reminded of a conversation I overheard recently between two of my colleagues. One said he had driven extensively through a part of suburban Shanghai, causing speculation that he must be fairly familiar with the ways of the region.

"Not at all, not since I drove with GPS," the other replied.

Online amenities are creating a utopia of idiots, as a few clicks are all that is needed to arrange a trip, buy something, book a ticket, find a restaurant, a job, or a date.

In the past it would take quite a while to produce a learned paper, or go through the paperwork for a divorce - now it can be all fixed up in 10 minutes.

The impact on true culture could be devastating.

Reading in the traditional sense of the word is being marginalized, and steadily replaced by online browsing, or better, watching.

"Of course the fight between a beauty and a beast in a bedroom is much more exciting than the subtle hints of affection in, say, 'A Dream of Red Mansions'," observed Wang.

Strangely, exposure to the multiplicity of frivolous bits of sensational news gets people hooked, so they crave more of the same.

Fragmented life

As the fragmentation of our lives deepens, our attention span is now measured in seconds, just enough for consuming a weibo or blog entry, but markedly inadequate for reading a serious novel or learned paper.

The online world is dictating a new paradigm, a new code of ethics in which the most unusual, unexpected, unconventional, or funny acts have the best chance of being noticed. Online celebrities are our teachers, role models, heroes.

A kindergarten teacher in Zhejiang Province dragged a child off the ground by his ears so that she could become an online hit. She succeeded.

On August 9, an intoxicated woman in Shanghai was still writing on her weibo account shortly before her fatal car crash.

There was also a handsomely paid young man who gave an online, live broadcast of his last hours before he successfully hanged himself.

All the world is a stage, and people go about life more and more like actors, throbbing with excitement in anticipation of rave review.

Often have I seen some young passengers whose eyes remained glued to their hand-held screens even while elbowing their way into or out of a crowded metro, totally oblivious to the motley crowd bustling around them.

You can be persuaded that life, in its unedited, unenhanced version, is losing favor, like the worst flop of the season.

So the latest People's Daily initiative of flirting with online coinage is no less than a serious attempt to bridge the widening gap between traditional mainstream media, and the brave online world.

Similarly governments at various levels are aggressively leveraging weibo as a new tool in information release or crisis management, in their eagerness to create the image of serving the people. Meanwhile, cyberspace and modernity continue to fragment life and repackage it in conveniently attractively bits of fast food.

Therefore the people most admired in the cyber age are those online information vendors, "intelligent idiots," who know something about everything, firmly in fashion, though without their own judgment and thought.

As Wang observed, cyber technology is an ideal tool for the control of brain and soul.

Wake up

Wang ended his commentary with an appeal to those who refuse to give up their brain's native function to discern, digest, doubt, disagree, and discover.

They would still be able to appreciate the beauty and sanctity of traditional classics, open only to the persevering and the inspired.

Hopefully, Wang mused, some of them would add something to the legacy of the spiritual storehouse bequeathed by our ancestors.

Traditional media still have a future if people have the innate urge to carry on their spiritual legacy.

Meanwhile a backlash is building against cyberspace inanities.

It was recently reported that an elderly man enjoying a rare gathering of his many grandchildren found himself doubly lonely because everyone of them was wrapped up in their iPads, iPhones and busy updating their weibo.

As a matter of fact, the grandchildren are more deserving of compassion, since they are condemned to a virtual world of emptiness, alone together in an orgy of loneliness. Will they one day wake up and fight against cyber enslavement?