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?"

Comments

Re:Intelligence is tweaked not obtained.

[ph1ll]

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.