Is the internet making us stupider?

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Topic started by Phil Now With New Piccies (philn)

A man of opposites; laid back, sociable when you get to know me, charming, but a little quiet and maybe mysterious at first. Different? Maybe - but it's all part of the charm :0) I will talk to anyone about anything - meaning of life and universe down to trivia. My curiosity is one of my greatest strengths. I'm settled in Guildford and love being close to London. In California until 24 June

A topic from Technology: Web

philnMon 04/06/07 21:30

Well, not stupider perhaps, but more intellectually lazy?

I've always been a great believer in the internet as a kind of "mental enabler", a way of enhancing our own brainpower. But there is an alternative viewpoint which says that the sheer ease of availability of data on the net is bad for us, and leads to a sloppy and lazy mental attitude to data analysis

whereas before, to find out something, you needed to engage in an active research process, now a quick google search produce a deluge of "information" about any particular subject, much of which is quite possibly innacurate

now i would still argue that this, if used discriminately, is a powerful reserach tool in itself. But many people will just grab hold of any data which suits their particular theory, irrsepective of its source or accuracy

you can see this happen so often on here - someone parades a piece of data to support whatever their pet theory is, and then get into a furious argument with someone else who has their own piece of data, also extracted from the net, and showing something completely contradictory, and no immediate way of choosing between them. the Net is, in general, not good at providing a qualitative assessment of the data it so easily makes avaialble

it still amazes me that the internet gives everyone instant access to virtually the whole sum of human knowledge. but is this actually a good thing?

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