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?"
How am I going to think about a vaccine to cure breast cancer, or nanorobotics, without looking it up? I mean I might get some vague idea about such things, but the specific details I could never imagine. I just don't buy that a significant number of people look up things without thinking about them, it makes more sense that they look up things because they want to think deeper about a particular thing. I can't force you to believe me, which is what you seem to want, but I'm sure I'm right for the typical person that researches on the internet.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
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.
it definitely makes people dumber. There is no sense of scale and no memory of past events any more
On the contrary. It allows us to see the history of Slashdot posters such as yourself. Take this gem:
Regarding Islam: "Why is it that showing pictures of a 7th-century pedophile who started a death cult is somehow "offensive"? The whole fucking religion is OFFENSIVE"
Or this pearl of wisdom:
"Islam is fundamentally evil ... the 7th century death cult, it doesn't mean shit to me."
You like that expression, eh? Take you a few hours to come with it, hmm? And who can forget the classic:
"...even Muslim "scholars" argue over the building timeframe. [It] is more than 50 years after Mohammed's (ptooie) death"
It's pretty clear which side of the fence you sit on regarding this tragic loss of life.
And just in case we're in any doubt about your feelings to other people who are different to you, let's take a look at this insightful comment:
"...say around San Francisco (the city full of gay [sic] )"
Bravo.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Please, accept my use of the the words `dumberer' and `cleverality' as intentional irony.