Slashdot Mirror
Does the Internet Make Humanity Smarter Or Dumber?
Nemilar writes "The Wall Street Journal is running a pair of articles asking whether the Internet is making humanity smarter or dumber. The argument for smarter is that the Internet is simply a change in the rules of publishing, and that the bad material is thrown away; the second story critiques the 'information overload' aspect of the Internet, claiming that we have traded depth of knowledge for velocity and span. What do you think? Does the Internet make you stupid?"
Of course it can easily make you dumber, just like TV can make you dumber. The similitude has become to apply after 1995 when big players (telcos, etc.) became Internet providers and when companies and marketing agencies have become to realize to potential of Internet as a marketing tool and viewed it as just like another tool similar to TV.
Don't get me wrong, it is still possible to use the Internet to get smarter or at least more informed but given what I observe, it for the typical Joe user that uses it in a way comparable to a modern T.V. where you can play games running on the cable company hardware, it makes him dumber.
You could be surprised by how many people are proud to announce breaking news to me because they received an chain-email containing a ridiculous story that takes me about 30 seconds to debunk. The most worrying part is that they actually deeply believed it before sharing it with me.
Some people believe anything they watch on TV and read in newspaper. Nowadays, a lot of people believe anything they see on the Internet just like if they had seen it on TV.
Well to their defense, this is the way it was marketed and sold to them by the big players, just like an extension to TV with very low emphasis on educating people about the technology, security, etc.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
> What do you think?
I think false dichotomies make good headlines.
Check out dis funny picture of cat.
Actually I think it reveals our stupidity.
But the real issue here is that the article doesn't really address "Does the Internet Make Humanity Smarter Or Dumber?". Instead it should be entitled: "Does distraction, largely in part to the internet, make some individuals process information differently?". Sure distractions are always "bad":
When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.
But does a fragmented short term memory have permanent effects? He talks in the article about
In another experiment, recently conducted at Stanford University's Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab, a team of researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important information from trivia.
To me, what led those people to do media multitasking in the first place? Perhaps the media did not engineer some level of "multitaskness" (not a word, I know) but that this multi-tasking ability was inherent to those individuals' respective personalities. This brings be back to my first point that the internet reveals our stupidity AND perhaps just our personality in general.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
It intensifies both ends of the human spectrum. Next!
Does the Internet Make Humanity Smarter Or Dumber?
I tire of constantly pushing the idea that the internet is a double edged sword. It liberates you to pursue your desires whether they be learning, information, socializing, games or porn. In this liberating spirit, I claim it is possibly the greatest revolution yet in regards to information.
... time management for people has been an issue going all the way back through human history. Why must we stop now and act like 100% of our time must be spent on the internet playing Farmville?
Now it's just your choice to use it as you desire. And anyone who says they will only ever use it for something like learning is flat out liar and, frankly, missing the point of the internet. I waste time on the internet and I am productive on the internet. Use the full spectrum of the internet and you'll get the most out of it as what it is: a tool. The choice is yours
My work here is dung.
The internet just enhances what is already there. Stupid people become more stupid and intelligent people become more intelligent.
No technology is good or bad. Neither does it make you smart or dumber.
I don't watch a lot of television, but when I do, I watch Discovery, The History Channel, or Animal Planet. I tend to learn something new every time I watch.
Now, if all you watch is reality TV and sitcoms, you're less likely to learn anything. Once again, it comes down to personal responsibility.
The idea of the internet making you stupid is the stupidest idea ever. I now have the worlds information at my finger tips, I get updates in near real time. For instance new cures and new science that is published, I now read within hours, instead of months or years later in some book. Granted, if you're a stupid person the internet can be used for stupid things just like anything. Couch potatoes glued to the boob-tube in the old days are equivalent to today's myspace and facebook junkies. But still the internet has a huge potential to educate motivated individuals, in ways that were not easy or possible before.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
Could repeat the question please?
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
The Internet Makes You Stupid
It changes the way a person thinks.
Instead of worrying about retention of specific knowledge, I find myself caring more about how to find information again if I should need it. I've been treating the Internet like an extended memory bank. It certainly adds to my humility and (by extension) my critical thinking skills that it takes only a few seconds with Google to demonstrate the inferiority of my personal knowledge and experience on any issue. Questioning your convictions on any topic often leads to a new way of looking at things.
Dedicating a moment's thought to it, I don't believe the Internet can make a person dumber, but it can contribute to intellectual laziness - being convinced that the answer is out there if you care enough to look for it could conceivably make you less likely to try to figure something out for yourself.
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.
Being more informed and more aware doesn't really make us smarter or dumber, just more opionated.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
When the Internet enables a group of people I agree with, it is making humanity smarter.
When the Internet enables a group of people I disagree with, it is making humanity dumber.
In the old (pre-internet) days, kids had a very limited number of "bad kids" living near them, and they were clearly pointed out as "bad".
But nowadays, kids are exposed to millions of bad kids (and adults), and they're all promoting their badness as being "good". On the internet.
Mark Twain once said of newspapers: "If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you DO read a newspaper, you are misinformed." The internet works the same way.
Wuz? R U 4 Real?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Will get back to you on that question in a sec - first I have to watch these babies impersonating Lady Gaga.
As long as humanity lives in slavery to international banks, corporate interests, and the military industrial complex, arguments like this don't matter.
The Internet makes some people smarter, and some people stupider. The point is that it is used as a wag to monitor, control, and occupy ALL of it's users.
Now excuse me while I post personal information on Facebook and waste hours that could be productive watching YouTube and Hulu.
But the internet definitely has had a dramatic effect on latency..
Intelligent use of the internet, like intelligent use of a library or research facility lets you do more good stuff quicker. It probably also lets you extend your capabilities (though sometimes people extend too far and become burdens rather than assets).
However, if you're not inclined to use your mental faculties and just want to goof around all the time, the internet lets you waste time like never before. Of course there are poeple at work (you probably know some) for whom the best contribution they can possibly make is to just sit in the corner and keep out of the way.
On the whole I reckon that like radioactivity, it's a force for good. Although it has the potential to enable a lot of bad stuff if people wish to use it for that.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It goes both ways. With TV, you have the option of using it to educate yourself (PBS, news channels, Discovery, History, etc) or to turn your brain off (soap dramas, American Idol, sitcoms, etc). The only difference with the Internet is that it's (generally) quicker to access and is much more on-demand. If I wanted to learn about my hometown during World War II or something, I could use a search engine and find it. On the other hand, if I wanted to see dancing cats, I could find it on YouTube.
Actually, I'd argue that the Internet has the potential to make one smarter because developing content for the Internet has a barrier to entry that's much lower than developing content for nationwide television and/or radio.
Possibly.
I is no stupid durrrrr
I have a bad memory. It seems to have pointers to memories but sometimes can't retrieve the memories.
With the internet, I can use the pointer to find what I was trying to recall.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It makes us esmarter!
Why do you even have to ask? Of course the Internet makes us smarter. With the Internet comes unprecedented access to infor... OMG Lolcats!
In my eminently ignorable view, this is a false dichotomy. The possible options are, (1) smart people are less smart than they would otherwise be, (2) smart people are smarter than they would otherwise be, (3) dumb people are dumberer than they would otherwise be, (4) dumb people are smarter than they would otherwise be, (5) dumb people are neither smarter nor dumber and smart people are neither smarter or dumber, than they would otherwise be.
Now, it seems to me that people who didn't read before, when given access to intertubes, may gain knowledge they would never have gained previously (I know many people like this), hence they are less dumberer than they were before. It is also true that smart people can become even smarter with access to the internet because they are given access to a much wider and more diverse body of knowledge within which to embed and test their expertise (post-modernly known as Contextualising). Knowledge comes in bundles, but cleverality involves forming associations between bundles. The more bundles you know about, the greater the number of possible associations and transferable metaphors/techniques are available to you to solve any particular problem. The internet does not stop you gaining expertise in any one bundle, it just allows you to gain a greater understanding of the fields surrounding your particular chosen bundle.
Anyone can be a journeyman in anything by just looking up the proper info. I remember the time pre-internet and pre-cell phone, and while I remembered more things back then, I didn't have the daily "putting new thoughts together" experiences that I have now. Something that would have taken me a day to answer (or calling a librarian and having her spend an hour), now takes me a couple minutes at most.
Maybe that would explain the growing use of "tl:dr", which is short for "too long, didn't read", which I'm seeing more and more on articles. The sad thing is that most of the time the people that add the line haven't written anything especially complicated or long.People are either getting stupider or lazier.
tl:dr; author thinks the use of tl:dr is a symptom of people getting dumber.
I remember very well that when I was connected at 56K, I used to waste my limited online time downloading programming related documentation for offline usage. Of course I was a kid looking for programming experience just for fun.
Now at cable and DSL speeds, I feel high-bandwidth contents (audio, video) are more in the role of wasting people's online time. I cannot however draw any conclusion since 56K and DSL are to very distinct times of my life.
What do you /.ers think? Is high-bandwidth internet promoting less education? Or is it totally uncorrelated?
Compared to what?
Smarter or dumber?
Wow, a black or white choice....
I could have sworn we have a spectrum of living color.
But I must be wrong, as they said so. But does that make me smarter or dumber to know this?
Is it just me or have people still not properly defined what they mean by the internet?
Did the printing press make us dumber?
The Internet and associated technologies like the WWW are an intelligence enhancer on a larger scale than that.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Articles like this, which are cheap attention grabbing garbage, make me dumber.
I'll let you know after I Google it and check Wikipedia, and get some feedback on Facebook. Oh, that reminds me I need to take care of my farm, and check all my friends in case they are doing anything, which reminds me of a funny bumper sticker someone told me about, which was actually on a suitcase, not a bumper, which was kinda funny 'cuz it was on a motor scooter! Anyway, yesterday I had a lot of fun, even tho I didn't do much - lol - and my cat was just sitting there even though the milk was all kinda messy. So hey whatsup?
The internet doesn't make you dumber or smarter. It just exposes the stupidity that has been present in the human race since the dawn of time and exacerbates the effects of said stupidity. Pre-internet stupid was largely passivve or at least created localized impacts and the stupid spread at a slow rate of speed. Now the waves of stupidity ripple across the world with astounding speed. The good thing is the intelligence does the same thing. It's not smarter or stupider it's just that the impacts are exposed, larger and faster. Like most things it's just different and we don't like change (especially the older among us) so we write articles about how it might be making us stupid since we can't or haven't bothered to understand or adapt.
You can choose to use the Internet to be smarter - search a lot, explore widely and deeply, and let it coordinate your everyday life to unburden that cognitive load...
or...
you can become a single neuron in the group-think texting twitter-mind, and spend the rest of your time touching up your facebook image and ogling celebrity gossip sites and cat/fail videos.
Be the miner or the mined when it comes to new knowledge. It's up to you.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I think the effect of increased bandwidth is to shift more entertainment onto the network. However, I think it's mostly the same kind of entertainment that comes from radio, tv, and movies. There are now cool multiplayer games, but I don't think I'd qualify those games as "promoting less education". There were other kinds of electronic games before there were online multiplayer games, so there were other outlets for gamers before broadband.
On the positive side, the increased bandwidth has enabled people to reach more reference materials more quickly online. If you go online to find information rather than games, then you are learning rather than playing. But that falls apart if you get distracted and go to YouTube to watch videos of singing kittens and Mentos fountains.
Yeah, maybe a lot of people fall into the last group.
As more people group together, humans make dumber choices more based on emotion then anything else. Thus I think social networking sites are a terrible thing for humanity.
I think it *can* be a good thing. The Encyclopedia of Life seems to be shaping up well. Wikipedia I think has been neutral. But more often to not people use things like Facebook which is nothing but a waste of time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It certainly draws your attention as to just how many dumb people there are!
The internet makes people smarter who want to use it well and dumber for those who just use it as entertainment. Out here in a rural area we don't have libraries and other resources that are available in urban areas. Thankfully we also don't have the urban area problems. The internet gives us resources. How you use them is your choice.
I thought the answer was slashdot? Bad content can be filtered, and there is an overwhelming amount of garbage. Its the garbage you want, with a filter. Its slashdot, the better internet.
The internet gives people choice. Choice is a good thing.
What the Internet has done is that almost no matter how obscure your preferences are, it's a group on the Internet for it. According to the latest stats there's 1.8 billion people online. Even if one in a million think like you, there's 1800 of them on the Internet. There's language barriers and some other details too, but still. Of course it's natural that like minded people meet, but on the Internet it's so extreme you run into groupthink - Exhibit A.
Take for example the coming wave of elderly in the western world. Here on slashdot we have mostly technological/geeky solutions. Doctors for the most part have medical solutions. Economists has some monetary solutions. Each group can think because they all just read their own sites that they've understood what "everybody" thinks and what "consensus" is on how to solve it, in short that they're smart when really their solutions are shallow, unfeasible and incomplete because they haven't been challenged enough. You see it with some computer systems, all the geeks agree it's great but unless you get user testing from somewhere else it very often flops.
I don't think we've really gotten dumber on the fundamentals even though we search the Internet rather than know by heart, there's much less meaning in memorization and hand calculation but then I never felt that to be a valuable skill in itself - it's a bit like measuring your writings by your fountain pen technique. The real value is what you understand, your ability to draw reasonable conclusions. Knowledge is important because you need to know the facts and the context to draw those conclusions from. It takes different skills because so much on the Internet is bullshit, if ypo put someone who is used to only serious and reliable sources and put online they could end up being dumber. But the younger generation who knows the pitfalls, they can go much further.
I simply think the answer is that we're getting more specialized, which is neither smarter or dumber - just different.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nothing about the internet makes humanity smarter or dumber in itself. Nothing. The only thing it does is...make it more obvious.
The true character is the same.
First of all, nothing really makes you smarter or dumber. While your capability to learn may change over time, in general a specific type of media will not impact this ability, unless we're talking about parking young children in front of a TV and ignoring them, which is another issue.
The internet, like TV, books and magazines, radio, etc does not affect your intelligence. What you get out if it is based on how you decide to use it. Spending hours on Facebook playing farmville is a huge waste of time, just like watching American idol, etc.
Using the internet for other things such as looking up how to do something or a particular fact can increase your knowledge, as can watching a show about history or science on TV.
Personally I think the WSJ has gone significantly down hill since News Corp bought it...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
The first article doesn't address the notion that these changes in thought patterns could lead to greater intellectual abilities down the road. The author says:
but maybe that's subject to change over time, as more and more humans don't pay deep attention. Or maybe we will adapt to be able to more easily pay attention deeply to the most important details.
Additionally, even if that doesn't happen (soon, or ever), maybe humanity as a whole is better served this way. Maybe we don't need everyone to be a deep thinker. Maybe we can benefit from a large segment of people who can think quickly, but not as deeply.
In other words ... Idiocracy is funny, but unlikely. We will adapt and move forward over time, as we always -- given sufficient time -- have.
Does creating a false choice in an inflammatory article create click-throughs and ad views? More at 11...
Subsidizing the fecundity of the stupid does.
The web has made a tremendous difference in what I can accomplish. I'm old enough to remember the days when I anxiously awaited new issues of electronics magazines because they presented a steady stream of projects that introduced me to new components and ways of doing things. These days, I often turn to forums, manufacturer's websites and other people's project pages for new ideas, advice and assistance. Over the course of the past 15 years, I've become adept at leveraging a vast pool of knowledge to dramatically improve the stuff I create.
The flip-side is that the 'net can be a huge timewaster if all you do is surf gossip sites, post on twitterface or play games. However, my suspicion is that the people who use the web to kill time would have found other ways to fritter time away in the pre-wired days (and, to be honest, what seems like wasted time to one person could be life-changing to another).
I asked the Yes No Oracle the question "does the internet make you stupid?" and the answer was yes.
Some people will use the net to become more informed. Others will use it to zone out and learn less than they might have otherwise. For most people, the internet will both increase learning in some areas and increase intellectual laziness in others.
consider the curious child. before the internet, information came from parents, teachers, library, or the local media. the internet gives access to information on any topic, and also access to people who are interested in any topic. with machine translation, book scanning, special interest forums, and freely available university lectures, it is hard for me to imagine how someone could claim that the internet does not make humanity smarter. the indifferent person will still be ignorant, but the curious person has easy access to a wealth of information that was very difficult to find before the internet.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/16/1647213/A-History-of-Media-Technology-Scares
1565: books have to much information, this is too much for the human brain...
same shit, different medium - there will always be reactionist... move along, nothing to see here...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Let us consider two cases:
What have we gained as a direct result of these technologies? What have we lost?
Is it worth it?
I remember being told to play outside all day - back when we could do that without sunscreen and without getting burned. It used to be that I had to make a plan and stick with it if I was going to meet a friend - I couldn't call them when I got to the place and THEN figure out where they were waiting. I didn't used to be a slave to the byzantine contract or incessant needs of my portable phone (that probably isn't giving me cancer). I imagine libraries were a lot more popular, living rooms were centered around conversations or musical instruments, and if you couldn't sleep you could listen to live performances on the radio. To name just a few examples.
What have we gained? Well, the space on my desk that used to be for a rolodex/business cards is now taken up with Arduinos & servos. My girlfriend sits up in bed and watches Glee on her iPad instead of finishing her cross stitch. Pinging the hivemind to solve a technical query is pretty damn awesome. uh... everything else I can think of is probably a negative.
So while I haven't definitively made up my mind, I feel like the evidence I am aware of leans towards "worse off".
"I don't watch a lot of television, but when I do, I watch Discovery, The History Channel, or Animal Planet." - Das Auge
See subject line.
After all, monkeys can already type out stuff that, to the untrained eye, is indistinguishable from perl, or a loss of carr#%^%^%(*_)*&)(*!
The Internet make us smarter, and being smarter allow us to find more complex ways to do dumb things.
Smarter people will use the internet to be smarter and lazier
Dumber people will use the internet to be amused and lazier
The rest of the people will use the internet for something in-between... amused and smarter and lazier
The internet can't make you dumber -- When you start at the bottom, there is only up.
if you use the internet to seek crap (read trash articles and constantly seek britney spears) you go dumb. if you use the internet to seek good information (read encyclopedias and educational videos) you become smarter. It's not the fault of the Internet but the people using it to serve their end.
The internet provides more opportunities for being stupid in public.
But it does make dumber people more visible.
The stupidity was already there I just chiseled away all the pieces.
The Internet, in sharp contrast, is rich with content of very high value, easily accessed by anyone with even moderate 'net skills and literacy. The problem is if you come in with the average set of skills our culture and our pre-college school system provide you with, you aren't equipped to take advantage of that unless you did a lot of self-starting as well.
Anecdote: Recently, I interviewed young folks for an internship; what I wanted was an ability to read and write at a decent level, use a spelling checker, and basic (+-*/) math skills. I went though over ninety applicants before I found one. Over ninety!
But they all had lots of experience in in high school sports. And someone -- most assuredly not me -- had told them this would count for something. Maybe if the job is ditch digging, it would, but not in an office environment.
Slashdot is a collection of people so atypical - so skilled as compared to the average US citizen - that I can't even imagine comparing how they process tv and schooling as compared to the average citizen. When we ask here how television affects someone, we're asking a group that's already been selected for way above average skill sets. For instance, if I watch Fox News, I spend the entire time either laughing or shaking my head in disgust. But it's the most popular news broadcast in the country.
To paraphrase Phil Plait, it seems as though we're doomed.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
for velocity and spam.
We're not getting dumber; we're getting less patient and less disciplined. We're losing the discipline to read long passages of text and we're becoming more distractable.
Over the last few years, my attention span has gone down dramatically. Reading a long article in Scientific American is a huge chore for me now - I used to read the thing from cover to cover in one sitting.
And let's face it, the internet is one big echo chamber. If you Google something, you'll see the exact same text repeated over and over and over again. I asked my doctor a medical question that basically flew in the face of everything said on the internet.
And let's not forget that journalism has gone to hell because of the internet. Things are being written to bring in traffic.
Where the internet really shines? Consumer awareness. The internet has been a HUGE benefit to consumers.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
While as a whole it is making access to information much more readily available, it still doesn't alter our brain hardware makeup. Until we start to do that, one can argue that we are still no more "smarter" than our ancestors.
Thanks to the Internet and P2P I completely eliminated the need to sit through commercial breaks.
I heard about the iPad though...
Both.
Next question?
It is my opinion that the internet does not affect peoples' intelligence at all.
What I think the internet (in combination with excellent search engines like google) does, and is pretty wonderful at, is making a wide variety of communication and knowledge available at very low cost.
Examples:
When I needed to find a procedure on how to change the clutch on my car, a bit of googling, and there was someone that had done it for my model car, step-by-step, with photographs! It _saved_ me.
Learning that there was an opensource anti-virus software that I could use for my Linux box (clamav) and that it had a M$ port (clamwin).
news.google.com for learning about things happening as news, globally.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Next question please?
I would say smarter _and_ dumber. Dumber in the sense that information can be searched for; found; and copy-pasted into various forms without being subjected to intellectual scrutiny. In my book that's a bad thing. Smarter in the sense that one can find and leverage information provided that you are smart enough to understand the difference of the above and line of reasoning and this line. - The internet is absolutely full of truly useful information that can be accessed by people blessed with uncensored access. But still, many people just aren't skilled to understand what to do with this alexandriatic access .. Too bad ..
Smarter, unless you're Dutch.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=smarter%2C+dumber
Or does this mean the Dutch are already too smarter and can only be dumbed down?
It makes it much easier to notice how dumb people are without even leaving your home.
So while, overall it may have positive influence, it also makes you lose faith in humanity.
As a few people here have already argued, the internet is akin to the printing press, acting as a vast repository of information. This article maintains a similar viewpoint:
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/15-how-google-is-making-us-smarter
Try to remember/imagine how it was 15 years ago. If you were really wondering about how something works, you might eventually go down to the library and if you were really lucky, you might actually find some sensible and easy-to-read book with the information you were looking for. Now that whole process has been cut down from one week waiting + 1-2 hours of investigation to 1 minute, which means that you can do this process much more rapidly. Could we please stop asking these stupid questions!
Cynical jokes aside, what's most distinct about humans, as compared to other living things, is the human capacity to learn. The mass of the brain is there less for calculating than for acquiring and linking more information.
We've had an enormous breakthrough in rapidly disseminating information and enabling self-education. That some people make blunders and that some mistaken ideas are more widely circulated does not contradict this. Asking whether the Internet makes us smarter is like asking whether providing light, water, and enriched soil makes plants grow better.
Years ago, there was an incredibly awful country song, "Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning," by Alan Jackson, with the lyric, "I'm just a simple man/I don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran." At the time, whenever I heard the song, I'd think, "So put the microphone down, go the library, and find an encyclopedia, dumbass." These days, whenever I hear anyone ask a question for basic information -- where is Turkmenistan? who is K. D. Laing? -- the answer is frequently, "I'm not sure -- check Wikipedia," or, "Google it."
Simple ignorance is more easily overcome than in the past. Willful ignorance is harder to defend.
the powers that be were annoyed with the internet for a while, and were trying various ways starting from anti net neutrality moves to acta to control it. i hear that this year's bilderberg gathering has the internet and various 'harmful' aspects of it on the table. especially the ones which talk about monsanto, gmos, imf, arms trade, politicians, news channels and the relations of these with each other. and voila - suddenly, as if a signal given, in every country some source puts out bullshit attacking internet. wsj in usa, a politician here, a journalist in another country, all to 'shape the public opinion' that 'internet needs to be controlled'.
Read radical news here
The internet is a tool, nothing more. Asking whether it makes you more intelligent is like asking if a hammer makes you smarter.
Of course, by shear virtue of asking the question....
"Irony"
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
99.999% of television is utter, irredeemable crap
90% of everything is crap.
You can't take the sky from me...
The internet trades off nothing. It is merely a vehicle by which we are currently connected to each other and by which we will someday nearly all be even more closely connected to each other. Right now, if we wanted to get a general idea about what Jessica Simpson or Jerry Seinfeld has been doing in the last month, we can. I only see that portal into other people's thoughts and lives growing larger all the time.
In digg attitude, "definitely maybe".
There is a common myth that it is either breadth or depth of knowledge, and that your brain could not hope to do both. I find the opposite is true. As long as you take the time to actually learn a topic in depth the breadth that the Internet gives you only helps you excel in your chosen field by applying knowledge from other fields. The only negative claim I do give weight to is the difficulty focusing; while too much knowledge is not a bad thing, the rate at which it comes needs special efforts to ensure you are not sacrificing your ability to focus when you need to. This is why I suggest meditation if you spend your entire life online.
That it makes the dumb dumber and the smart smarter.
And bit by bit everyone an asshole.
The essence of both WSJ articles is that stupid people are the pool from which intelligence emerges. It's rule #1 of the power game: stupid people need intelligent ones to govern them and in turn intelligent gov't people need stupid ones to rule over.
Corollary #1: Power also makes stupid people more stupid and more powerless at the same time making intelligent people more intelligent and more powerful.
Corollary #2: Killing stupid people increases the percentage of intelligent ones.
Research topic #1: What can convert a dumb person to an intelligent person? (there are millions of answers for the reverse question, but not so many for this one...)
Research topic #2: Is it really desirable for the economy to reduce the population of dumb persons?
Research topic #3: If trade is to civilization what sex is to biology, what's the biological equivalent of debt?
Do cars make humanity faster or slower?
Are we talking about our ability to get places in a hurry? Or our ability to run?
Ask me about my sig!
The problem is that if e.g. a vaccine to cure breast cancer had been invented 20 years ago by some obscure eastern scientist, this knowledge could have been easily suppressed by the powers to be (and most probably has).
Now on the Internet you can find thousands of cures for cancer, none of which is supposed to work (although some individuals might be healed by the faith in them).
What really kills me is that nobody will ever test any of these cures in case it might work. Same applies to free energy, UFO's, conspiracies etc.
It's puzzling that the Internet is considered as 100% trustworthy in some areas and 100% deceptive in others.
But it depends on laziness (the one that’s hurting oneself).
I, for example, did learn so much from the Internet, I could not have learned it in 10 offline lives with books.
Just because it takes less than 30 seconds to look something up. And because the stuff you learned in the past, combined with the new stuff, makes you realize even more things.
Of course if you just watch the latest pop shit on youtube and basically don’t do much more than if you’d do it in front of a TV, you can’t be helped.
And even if nothing changed, intelligence-wise, the freedom and communication speed we gain from the Internet, makes it the greatest invention mankind ever had.
Only with the Internet can you really say that our ideas have become life-forms of their own, growing, dying, reproducing, transforming, etc.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Just as dumb people have blamed TV for crimes. Just as dumb people have blamed books for crimes.
And it's not just about crimes, violence, provoked by song lyrics. General ignorance is caused not because people don't have tools, but because they don't use the tools and resources they have to overcome their ignorance.
The internet is like having a library at your fingertips. If you have the internet and you remain ignorant, you truly have no excuse. In the generations before the internet if you remained ignorant its because you didn't have a choice or didn't have access, but now that everybody has access the individuals who remain ignorant today are usually ignorant by choice and there will be less sympathy for these individuals.
I'm not saying we should know everything there is to know just because we have access to everything. I'm saying we should know everything we need to know if we have access to unlimited streams of information.
They always had this capability.
Correlation does not imply causation, but lack of correlation does imply lack of causation. Therefore, correlation implies a likelihood of causation. If A and B are correlated beyond reasonable coincidence, then either A causes B, B causes A, or C causes both A and B. So find C and get published.
90% of everything is crap.
90% of what isn't crap must be crap as well.
Hence, 99.999...% makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, that happens to mean that 100% of everything is actually crap.
I suspected this all along.
Great Intellect...
Whether we can reject a null hypothesis that the internet has no effect on our intelligence.
It makes Humanity smarter but Internet users dumerer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...they may still not figure it out and later try finding a book on the subject. And that's if the book is readily available, however
We go to school to learn how to think. They teach us discourses in English to show us that things may not be what they appear on the surface. Subjects like math and science show us that some of the things beyond our comprehension, previously attributed to God, can be explained through logic. Until you understand how our current knowledge was derived, it is difficult to analyse it in perspective and build on it. The internet is just an extension of this, the same way books are. Consequently, I strongly believe that it is making us smarter.
The measuring gauge still changing. And, good luck(s), folks. ;-)
One word: 4chan
To me, what led those people to do media multitasking in the first place? Perhaps the media did not engineer some level of "multitaskness" (not a word, I know) but that this multi-tasking ability was inherent to those individuals' respective personalities. This brings be back to my first point that the internet reveals our stupidity AND perhaps just our personality in general.
Here is my personal anecdote as a rebuttal. I know one anecdote does not research make, but it is as good as "one mans slashdot theory", so here goes. When I was young, we had no TV. I was (and still am to some degree), able to concentrate for extremely long periods of time (I would forget to eat etc). I have recently become a media mutitasker; why you ask? I bought an iPhone. Now if I am watching a show, or out and about, I can always check my phone for topics of interest. And guess what? I have been having considerable trouble concentrating of late! Research like this should at least give us pause for reflection. Right, I'm putting my damn phone down, and will go do something useful!
It makes me more social, knowledgeable, etc. since I can interact, communicate (have speech and hearing impediments, and don't like being out in public), explore, etc. Much better than being lonely and isolated (still physically limited due to my disabilities).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
TV paid for this articles.
The Internet makes people better.
Dumber or not is not important, said epSos.de.
The internet/T.V./radio/telephone are all merely tools. Like any tool I can use it constructively (smart people) or destructively (dumb people).
>Schools routinely "graduate" kids who can't read, write, spell, or do math
If you've been an educator, you know that the challenge isn't to get kids above a certain level, it's to get them to do something. You are given an incomplete Lego puzzle, can you make *something* out of it? After all, education is (mostly) self-motivated, even in a structured environment. As an educator, you take what you can get.
>Slashdot is a collection of people so atypical - so skilled as compared to the average US citizen
Right. Educationally speaking, these are people who are more like 2 or 3 complete Lego puzzles with the instructions to build only one. The possibilities are many.
>Maybe if the job is ditch digging, it would, but not in an office environment.
Then schools are not doing a good job of elevating the completes over the incompletes. You have a fixed bar of graduation requirements. Some people never achieve it, and drown themselves in sports. Others can easily achieve it, and become listless and unguided.
I would say that even an "office environment" is a low bar for some. These are the AP kids, for whom typing and Excel are considered basic skills.
Basically, high school is not job-placement or career oriented. They just try to get everybody out, and after that, it's on to the next batch. If you get a job after high school...who cares? Your guidance counselor? Not really.
Internet hasn't fixed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry yet.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
All your stupid are belong to me now mwah ha haha hahahaha!
Internet makes humanity different, not smarter nor dumber.
We will never get any smarter or dumber, the average IQ will always be 100..
it provides us, for the first time in history, with an actual tool to witness the actual stupidity of our species on a global scale and measure it in real time. In this light, effects on individuals would probably cancel each other out or not make a significant dent in that figure anyway. Our race does not need technology to achieve the highest levels of stupidity, we have managed quite well being thick idiots without that.
Just like books, newspapers and tv the act of using the internet medium does not simply make you smarter or dumber. This all depends on how you use it.
You can use the internet to play Flash games, read blogs, browse through Wikipedia and watch pictures of cats with a badly spelled caption. And you know what, I think any of these activities are beneficial to you in some way or another. Wheter it increases your wisdom, improves your ability to read text in a foreign language, increases your hand-eye coordination or simply provides entertainment.
Actually, I don't believe any medium can make you dumber. The opposite is true. However, if you limit your learning experiences to a single medium or a single way of using it, you are not simulating your brain enough, and that will certainly not improve your overall intelligence.
If all you do is watch porn then very unlikely it will make your head smarter.
If you do eduction online then you have a high chance of being smarter.
If you are involved in research then life is certainly easier.
But what is smart for humans? It's pretty smart if we learn how to get on with each other.
I have 2 cats, one new, one old. Despite how much the old cat hates it, I put the new cat on her back, when both are in my arms. The two cats are becoming friends. I've given them no choice. I'm the top cat around here. If they try to fight they can't hurt each other and run up a vet's bill as I've clipped their claws. Peace is simple.
If the internet creates empathy it's done far more than the media ever did.
Does it make us smarter? That really is 'up to you'.
Yes it does, just like american television does - because there are no rules about fairness in publishing, so most of the providers of information are totally biased to get more readers/viewers (thus more commercials) and people flock to those who just support their views. Leading to great and hostile polarizations - and ultimately war i suppose.
(And to those who say you can't have rules about being fair, yes you can, some countries have that with success for TV - though nothing for the net yet)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The internet can't make you stupid any more easily than it can change the color of your hair.
Can it leave you ignorant? That's a whole other question.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
rrrrggbb yyy hhh iiiiiiiiiiiiii
Im not sure let me google it and i'll get back to you.
On the whole, I think access to all this information is making us all smarter, not dumber. People are willing to learn how to use a search engine chances are they will realize how to deal with all the info returned. I usually filter through the top 10 of a search to see how much are saying the same thing....so I at least get 10 chances to learn what I need to know. That is me and only me, some are happy with the first pop up they get without cross referencing it....this would be where you could land yourself into trouble.
Also I usually go to wiki for most things specific....like learning the history of dogs, where they came from , when did we start using them or training them, what they are good for...hunting, etc.... doing a search for dogs, might land you on some website with doggie p0rn based on page rank, so by following these 2 sets of rules, i can usually find info on anything i need.
stupid questions make you stupid
let me google the answer to the question...
I used to post on liberal message boards. You know what I found? I wasn't learning anything. Sure, some conservatives would show up for "debate" but in practice, any conservative statement would be overwhelmed with responses, most of which were utterly stupid or ill-informed. So of course the conservatives responded mostly to the stupid responses, because who wouldn't go after the lower-hanging, easily-debunked fruit? Good liberal arguments ended up being ironically ignored by both the conservatives there and by most of the liberals.
Furthermore, the ideologically homogeneous environment led to an in-breeding of memes that produced insane conclusions that could not be dislodged by any amount of evidence nor reason (e.g. 9/11 conspiracies, belief in autism-vaccine links, etc.).
I've come to appreciate places like FRDB.org (formerly Internet Infidels). It's still a relatively homogeneous environment (mostly atheist), but the forum is well moderated, and poor arguments get swatted down by people on both sides of a given debate. This leads to an environment where I actually learn things and even change my mind about serious issues (e.g. I once believed in the autism-vaccine link).
If you go into a well-stocked library and only read books about Clifford The Big Red Dog, you're not going to get any smarter at best, and may actually get dumber. The Internet is — unsurprisingly—the same way.
Let's see... "Wow homie" Black mark for failure to use comma; "homie" Black mark for use of slang; "you experienced a nearly 1% literacy rate" Black mark for tortured sentence construction; "love2putmypenisthere", Black mark for poor presentation.
My standards for literacy are clearly higher than yours. The fact that you (and perhaps 89 or so other people who graduated next to you) don't understand this, or consider it an issue to correct... that was kind of my point.
Next candidate, please?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, you're on the Internet, writing; and your presumed writing skills are not in evidence. Why is that?
No, it makes your posts illiterate. There is also the matter of your ID; not clever, not edgy — simply childish. Sadly enough, it is through your posts that we form our impression of you.
While you think that over, here's something for you to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE&playnext_from=TL&videos=fbHM11yL9TE#
Tell me what you think. Are they like you, simply unwilling to bring skills to bear, or are they just what they seem to be?
No, generally I say nothing at all, except to my students, from whom I expect more than I do from you, or others I randomly encounter. Interestingly, that particular error is not simply a grammar error, it is a failure of politeness. Others before yourself... that's a basic courtesy. She and I; he and I; my parents and I... and so on. Open doors, encourage others to pass before you. Same general sensibility. Consequently, when I note that error, I don't simply think "grammar fail", I think "manners fail."
If you're going to sling vile imprecations about with an air of authority, you might want to take the time to ensure your target is who, and what, you imagine them to be. I take no offense — truly, I do consider the source — but it is sad to watch you flounder about here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.