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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'!!
This is who Tim Berners-Lee is.
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
"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.