Slashdot Mirror
Berners-Lee Says Internet Will Make Kids Creative
ErikPeterson submitted a story where Tim Berners-Lee (if you need explanation, you're reading the wrong site) is interviewed about how on-line life will make our children more creative than us. He makes various points and predictions about what the internet will do.
For those unfamiliar with Tim Berners-Lee, he is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
And he also predicts that the semantic web will take off Real Soon Now. ;-) (Where real soon is t + 5 years for continuously evaluated t.)
This is who Tim Berners-Lee is.
BERNERS-LEE: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. ...
I guess it will depend per person but I find that reading novels, poetry, and other "classic" lit is what causes ME to be more creative. Yes, that stuff is available online but we all know how cumbersome and uncomfortable it can be to read a novel on a screen.
I believe the Internet will lead to more better global understanding and knowledge (it already has). It will lead to better news reporting to compete with those that read from multiple news sources and have a better understanding of the truth so that sensationalism and out and out lies will likely decrease. Finally, I hope that through this global awareness, political pressure for values and family-first as well as "Great Firewalls" will end as governments (and those that run them) grow to understand and embrace the openness of the world.
Wishful thinking, especially when I believed that MY generation would understand these things and stop things like super right-winged conservative "family values" being pushed through the government. Instead, I am watching as people in America are growing up to want less and less freedom.
I am still hopeful as we didn't grow up 100% immersed in the Internet from birth.
The internet will reduce the value of a good long-term memory significantly, because you can always look things up, and it will increase the value of being a quick study dramatically. Those who can learn a new task on demand via the internet, use it, and move on to something new will be more successful than those who need to spend a long time learning. Specialization will become a lot less common, but will be a lot more valuable for those areas where it exists and is necessary.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen...
#1> Gimie you're IP and Ill hax0r ya rite aw4ay...!
#2> 127.0.0.1
#1 connection reset by peer
gtkaml.org
Seems to me it would make them more creative at three things...
1. Finding a way to send IM's to each other at school without the admin noticing.
2. Find ways to get to game/pr0n sites that filters block.
3. Find ways to appear working, while actually not.
An interesting story from #3...
A friend of mine was supposed to be doing some work for history at school, but didn't know that the computers had sound. (his work was in another window) He went to stupidvideos.com, and started to play a clip, but then the computer belted out, "Stupid Videos!" and then the sounds of someone doig something stupid. Thinking fast, he hid the taskbar and switched to the window with his work. The teacher never found out who it was playing the stupidvideos.
"For instance, the Net does not change the number of hours in the day or the number of things you can keep in your head." (emphasis mine)
Sure, it hasn't changed the potential of our memory -- but I would speculate that the internet has decreased the amount of information we do keep in our heads. Because information is so easily available, we need to remember less.
Is this a bad thing? Not as long as the Web is available to us. It probably makes us more effective in general, since we have more info at hand. But if the Web were to fail due to apocalypse or something, I think we'd have some cache-ing up to do.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
From TFA: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. ...
I suspect he didn't mean to say that our children will be more creative than we are. Just that we can't foresee what new applications will be developed, and how all that information will be used.
'making kids creative' would be hugely optimistic given what's currently happening on the internet, with most people's publications being either mundane or regurgitation. I suspect most activity on the internet is passive consumption rather than creative.
What makes children creative is getting outside and building forts out of anything they can find. It is playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. It is riding a bike, playing in woods, meeting friends in real life. It is reading the book and figuring out in your head what the characters look like, what hte landscape looks like. It isn't watching a movie or watching a slideshow on the internet.
The internet is fun, don't get me wrong. But it isn't helping people become more interactive and creative. it is a tool to do work, it is a tool to communicate. it isn't a new friend.
Take a peek at the GameFAQs.com forums. They are frequented by youth and young adults. Notice the terrible grammar, horrible spelling, and the inability of many posters there to post coherent, sensible content. Whether this is caused by a lack of proper education, or whether it is just the nature of message boards, is questionable.
Personally, I would never let my children or grandchildren post at the GameFAQs forums without proper supervision. It's not about protecting them from the content there, but more the presentation of the content. I support creativity, and to be truly expressive requires intelligence and at least the ability to read and write with clarity and correctness.
All a child will learn at GameFAQs is how to type and compose written works very poorly. While the Internet can help children become very creative, it can also lead them to become lazy in their communication habits. Frankly, I'd be adverse to letting a child, or even a teen, post frequently at forums like those at GameFAQs, just because of how their creativity could be negatively affected.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This argument of the web making kids more creative is I think faulty. The reasoning:
Smart & creative kids use the current environment of social structure to get to the information they want, or the tools they want. A library is one of those tools. The internet only makes it easier to access a lot more less structures information.
What the net probably does, is make it less boring for some kids, and thus giving more creative but without the internet easily bored kids a chance to show their creativity.
Boredom and attentionspan problems will however also take their toll on the internet, so to predict a more creative generation is not justifiable.
Time will tell.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Tim basically just states that since we're using his baby in ways he coldn't have foreseen, that certainly all the new stuff we'll see in the next 10 years will come as a surprise, too.
Well, Tim... duh! But I actually have a bone to pick with the way the post spins his comment. The web isn't going to make kids more creative. Perhaps it will allow natively creative kids to draw on more information and savor the exposure to a wider world... but that's only useful if creativity, as a hardwired personality trait, and as a parent-nurtured habit/way-of-life is actually present.
It's more likely that some creative children will leverage all of this great connectivity to grow up and make cool things happen, and that many more other children will leverage all of this great connectivity by sitting on their couches passively consuming that which the first group creates. Is there anything about humanity's adoption of any evolving communication medium that suggests otherwise? The availability of printing presses didn't turn everyone into authors, and the availability of cheap home video gear didn't turn everyone into creative filmmakers. And the availability of low-brow blogging and site authoring tools sure as hell hasn't made most kids any more creative - just noisier.
I am looking forward to how really creative people continue to push the technology in unexpected directions. But I know better than to think that the creative/potato ratio will change in any meaningful way, Semantic Web or not, Tim.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...ow. I think my brain cells just died.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Jeez, one thing I notice is that the Internet has caused everyone - including children/young people - to think that just because they have an uninformed or slightly informed opinion on something they ought to (1) argue it blindly (2) shout about it indefinately and (3) brow-beat those who disagree. Livejournal et all are just bastions of uninformed, or slightly informed opinion. There was a time in discourse - political or otherwise - when it was acceptable to say "I have no opinion on the matter". Now it seems like if you haven't got a deeply rooted opinion on a topic within 5 minutes of it happening you are doing a grave disservice to the world. There was a time when I had a blog (well, before it was called that) and I ended it after a few years beacuse I was tired of people e-mailing me demanding to know what I wasn't "covering" a specific topic.
This applies to my part of the US.
While I agree with you, I will hasten to add that just like what electronic gadgets and lack of focus have done to our kids in school, the heavy dependence on the Internet will help produce pretty confident kids but who cannot deliver in real world environments.
I know because I was a teacher at one time. Today's kids are pretty confident. They go:..."I can do this...I can do that"...mostly as end users. Just see how kids play the PS2s and XBoxes of this world. They are pretty good at this. When more serious problems come up at their places of work, they cannot deliver. Their companies resort to outsourcing. Little wonder that not much in America seems to be done right these days.
Just imagine for a second how we handled the Katrina hurricane after knowing that it was coming, it was big, it was headed for a city below sea level and that thousands could not evacuate. For the 5 or 6 days we had to prepare, shame is what we have to endure now. Generations to come will be embarrassed with this generation.
I'm not really convinced after reading the article (well, the one paragraph on the topic) that children are going to be more creative. I think by giving them so many channels of things to do, they're not forced to be as creative. I look at when I was growing up and the things I would do. I had Matchbox cars, legos, etc... Very static items that were only fun if I were creative. In fact, I remember spending a lot of time outside, finding L shaped sticks and pretending they were guns for a good game of cops and robbers with friends. Now, when I look at my little nephew, he spends a good deal of his time playing his gamecube. If he's not doing that, he's on the computer playing games on the net. Really, the only time he's doing anything similar to what I used to do is when he goes outside and rides his bike. The fact is, he really doesn't have to be creative because he has so many options at his fingertips that most of us didn't have when we were kids. Because of that, I really have to disagree with Berners-Lee.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Would you use the "cannibal" sentence? I don't think there's anything wrong with how I used like at all. I'm sure it was grammatically valid.
Why is it so ridiculous to use object pronouns for objects and subject pronouns for subjects? Is a sentence SUCH AS, "The next generation will be more creative than we are," that pompous?
There is a difference in the meaning of the following two sentences:
1) I like video games more than her.
2) I like video games more than she does.
The first compares my like for video games with my like for her. The second compares my like for video games with her like for video games. These two sentences could be expanded to the following:
1) I like video games more than I like her.
2) I like video games more than she likes video games.
Notice that the subject in the first clause of each sentence is "I". The subject is the one doing the verb. The object is the person or thing on the receiving end of the verb. In the second clause of the first sentence, the object is "her". The action (of liking) is received by "her". However, in the second sentence, "she" is the subject and "video games" are the object. "She" is doing the action (of liking), and "video games" are receiving the action (of liking). Unless there's a good reason not to, you should use the proper pronoun.
I think the issue of splitting infinitives is the same. If you make a habit of splitting them, it will be easy to, for the reader, get confused. Sometimes it sounds strange not to split an infinitive, and in those cases it's best to split them. The biggest "rules" about writing are to be clear, well organized, and persuasive.
Instead of just "asking anybody on the street" about any given topic, maybe you would do better to ask someone who is educated about it. Would you ask "anybody on the street" how to file your taxes or how to sing? If I were the one asking, I'd be a bit more selective. Nothing is lost by using the proper pronoun, unless your goal is "street cred". If that's the case, then by all means you can flame me hairless with Mr. T. English, gangsta slang, l33t w3rdz, or whatever.
Personally though, I think people who want to learn something about grammar should read the "grammar Nazi" posts, and those who don't should just skim over to the next post and let it go at that.
I'm a gnu world man.