The Internet and You
| Tue May. 12, 2009 9:23 AM PDT
Peter Suderman thinks the web isn't making us dumber, it's just making us different:
Reading on the web is almost certainly affecting the way we process information, but it’s not making us stupid. Instead, it’s changing the way we’re smart. Rather than storehouses of in-depth information, the web is turning our brains into indexes. These days, it’s not what you know — it’s what you know you can access, and cross reference.
In other words, books taught us to think like they do — as tools for storing extensive knowledge. Now the web teaches us to think like it does — as a tool for recall and connection. We won’t be so good at memorizing everything there is to know about a particular small-bore topic, but we’ll be a lot better at knowing what there is to be known about the broader category the topic fits into, and what other information might provide insight and context.
I find this an enormously appealing argument. Unfortunately, I can't think of any evidence at all to suggest it's true. Understanding "broader categories" — the context into which individual pieces of knowledge fit — requires you to read books. Full stop. Maybe someday it won't, but it does now.
As longtime readers know, I'm generally a scourge of cranky elders who spend a lot of time kvetching about how ill educated kids are today compared to the golden age they used to live in. Spare me. But that doesn't mean the opposite is true either. Kids who grow up on the internet may be great at looking up odd bits of information quickly, but my experience is that they often suck at figuring out what that information means and what conclusions it's reasonable to draw from it. That's because they don't know the context. They don't know the rest of the story. And that's because they don't read enough books.
I'd love to be wrong about this. But I'm not. If you want to understand the world, not just collect endless factlets, you still need to read books. If you do, the internet makes you smarter. If you don't, it makes you dumber.
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Comments
The internet has the same
Submitted by MBunge (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 9:44 AM PDT.
The internet has the same ill effect as the increase in people going to college - it creates folks who think they're smarter than they actually are.
Exhibit A - Jonah Golberg.
Mike
Internet Smarts
Submitted by Troglodyte on Tue May. 12, 2009 9:57 AM PDT.
As a teacher of college students, I can agree with Kevin's point of view. Students love an illustrative example, but have more trouble these days comprehending the narrative of a subject. The factoids sound neat, and often we lecturers plant them in a context the students can relate to e.g. popular culture. However, the pop-culture narrative isnt the right one for a typical college course. Ever try to reduce organic chemistry to fit the storyline of a NinjaTurtles episode? Not easy.
book learnin'
Submitted by blake on Tue May. 12, 2009 9:57 AM PDT.
an education has *always* been about how to find out things you don't know, not what you can cram into your head, and how to think about them. the net has made research easier, but almost certainly not the thinking part.
your pal,
blake
Maybe
Submitted by Dave Brown on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:02 AM PDT.
Two thoughts.
First, back when I was in college, a girlfriend who had her PhD told me, "to be a PhD it's not necessary to know a lot of information, you just need to know where to find the information." I guess with Google, we're all PhD's now.
Second, as far as reading books goes, there are good ones, and there are bad ones, and when the subject is politics, they're all in the latter category. They're either poorly written and impenetrable, or they're self aggrandizing and uninformative. In any event, I'd learn more by watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show.
Furthermore, the idea that some Manhattanite who's never been further afield than the Hamptons should be the arbiter of what gets published is just plain sickening. It's no wonder that all books, fiction and nonfiction have begun to look the same.
Get Off My Lawn
Submitted by Daves11thhour (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:04 AM PDT.
This seems like a silly argument Kevin is making. You can read as little or as much as you want on a subject via the internet. Information doesn’t have to come in book form. I’m nearly 50 years old and read plenty of books up until a few years ago. But I find the aggregate “context” of many different items on the web as informative and often more so, then the lengthy writings in a single book. Now, obviously, if you really want to become well-versed in a subject you need to consume (not necessarily just read) a lot of information on the subject. I think that can be done through a variety of media. Also, back in the day, I don’t remember lots of people buying lots of informative books. I think more people know more about more things, even if they aren’t experts, because of things like the internet and narrowcasting cable channels.
Books Force Form Onto The Mind
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:06 PM PDT.
Back in my college days I once asked one of my computer programming instructors why it was important to draw out our programs into flow charts. He paused, and he responded that he believed it was good for us because it slowed the mind down enough to contemplate the code we were writing. And he was right, it did. I feel books are also a type of process, not just an end unto themselves. Buying a book, opening the book for the first time. Smelling the book. Feeling it in your hands. Learning to balance the book as you read through it. Reading it in different body positions, locations, light settings, and sound settings. The experience of reading a book is deep, and complex - all of which helps in the process of memorization, and learning. I read large amounts of material on the Internet, but none of it has the impact that reading a good book can have on me.
Internet is shallow
Submitted by EB (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:19 AM PDT.
When I try to research a topic, I generally find the Internet to be a very shallow resource. You can get some pop-knowledge very quickly, but anything even mildly in depth, whether in history, science, medicine, or in most other subjects, is just not on the web. Well, scientific articles are Internet-accessible if you are subscribed to the right databases, but they are certainly not free to the general public, and scientific books are definitely not on the web. Internet IS a pretty good resource when it comes to things computer-related, though. Not surprisingly.
Internet is shallow
Submitted by EB (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:21 AM PDT.
When I try to research a topic, I generally find the Internet to be a very shallow resource. You can get some pop-knowledge very quickly, but anything even mildly in depth, whether in history, science, medicine, or in most other subjects, is just not on the web. Well, scientific articles are Internet-accessible if you are subscribed to the right databases, but they are certainly not free to the general public, and scientific books are definitely not on the web. Internet IS a pretty good resource when it comes to things computer-related, though. Not surprisingly.
Suderman doesn't think the Internet is making people dumber?
Submitted by Ken Houghton (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:27 AM PDT.
Has he checked his living-in-sin's recent postings and compared them to even her "Jane Galt" days?
QED.
Purely anecdotal: My
Submitted by BadPosture (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:37 AM PDT.
Purely anecdotal: My reading for the past 8 years has been on the internet, for a good hour or so a day, which started (coincidentally) when I began my current desk job. Over this span of years, I have often thought that my memory is getting worse, that I have poorer ability to recall facts that back up my arguments, and that I have a very difficult time justifying my opinions when spoken out loud. On the other hand, I feel like my thinking and opinions are basically sound, based upon a much vaster array of information that I consume now to inform my thinking. Also, I'm pretty sure that I have more ability to parse information and to question it than when I was "book learning" in school, and getting my knowledge from a couple of textbooks filtered through the mindset of whoever was teaching me that information. These days, I'm not able to remember when certain things happened, but I will be able to superficially absorb a lot of intelligent debate about the fundamentals, morals and consequences of said events. Does this make me smarter? No and yes, I think.
On the other hand, in this climate of talking heads who frequently lie and embellish facts and dates to support their own arguments and ensure themselves a paycheck, it behooves us to have some concrete recall ability. Journalism especially seems to be suffering to no small degree by an apparent lack of many mainstream journalist's knowledge of what happened when, to the point where they are unable to counter falsehoods because they can't identify them when they are spoken.
heh I think that is from geting older :)
Submitted by Kathleen on Tue May. 12, 2009 5:41 PM PDT.
Over this span of years, I have often thought that my memory is getting worse, that I have poorer ability to recall facts that back up my arguments, and that I have a very difficult time justifying my opinions when spoken out loud.Heh. When I read this, I thought, hey, me too! But I think for me it is because instead of being 45, 8 years later I am 53, and my brain cells are dying. But what I have noticed because I do most of my reading on the internet is that now, I can't remember where I read something, in order to look it up to cite it to someone else. Because before, when I read something, it was something I had in my hand, there were far fewer things that it could have been. So I could likely remember what I had seen, physically, and where I had seen it. Alas, this lack of recall could also have something to do with my age... but I suspect this bit is different. Also, having this wider breadth of material available to me means that I am exposed to a much wider opinion/frame of reference than before, where it was newspapers, magazines, or a book someone had (or I suppose I had). Now, I read opinions and experiences from many many places. I ultimately believe that there is a balance that is required in all things, exposure to information included. If we only know snippets of information we will have a shallow knowledge base. If we only know a few topics, but know them exceptionally well, we might be boring :D
The internet is a big place.
Submitted by Trippp on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:39 AM PDT.
Considering that 'the internet' has everything from a Wiki article to in-depth biographies on at least certain people, it is hard to generalize about the effect of 'the internet' on study and knowledge.
On a personal note, I've always had pretty much a photographic memory. I can recall images fairly easily, in fairly good detail. This was very helpful up through high school, but in college recalling facts and pictures became less important. In Engineering we started having open book tests, because in the real engineering world we would always have reference books available and needed to know where to look and how to use what we read instead of simply memorizing facts.
Anyway I've seen that access to the internet and google give people a virtual photographic memory if they choose to use it that way. So in a way, at least at the high school level of knowledge, I've lost my edge.
Also, as I've aged indexing and access to my memory have become the bottleneck more than the lack of information in the database. So are students different these days, and maybe more like I was? Could be, but I'd like to think I turned out OK and so will they.
Tripp
In re: different media: I
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:48 AM PDT.
In re: different media: I don't think that the operative alternatives are "smarter" and "dumber." The evidence for judging the effects of a new medium can only come from inferences based on how we have experienced older media.
Like past revolutions in communications technology (print, radio, television), the effect of the internet is additive; it doesn't replace anything. It definitely widens the scope of available sensation and information, and the speed with which both can be accessed or created. And it will make books, among the others, more widely available (on the web ).
I read books. (Sometimes I think, too many!) I look up words or references on the internet that I wouldn't have bothered to before; I order books I see referred to effortlessly (not costlessly) from Amazon or Abebooks; I read otherwise rare copies of obscure books (e.g. Malthus' Principles of Political Economy) on Google Scholar.
Were the kids who surf the net today reading Dickens or Tolstoy in their former lives? More likely, the same ones who formerly gravitated to non-print media will also gravitate to the internet: they read comic books, remote-changed the tv, or passed time doing other short-attention-spanning kinds of recreation. Or perhaps today's obsessive web-surfers were yesterday's bookworms, equally oblivious to the real world.
Whether or not you celebrate or blame the internet for creating new mental characteristics depends on whether you are naturally optimistic or pessimistic. I'm not either. I am generally optimistic about the enriching, niche-creating potential of new audio, visual, even tactile and olefactory media of communication -- and pessimistic about their potential to become addictive, all-consuming, other-worldly distractions.
Reading on the Internet
Submitted by Haldan (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 10:58 AM PDT.
No you can't read as much as you want on the Internet. You can gather as many facts as you want on the Internet (yay!), and you can read a whole bunch of old books on the Internet (double yay!), but you're limited by things like copyright protection and the logistics of reading Google Books on the computer.
But more than that, the Internet makes bad habits much easier to form. If it's easier to scan Source A online than it is to read Source B in person, people will read stay at home and scan Source A, regardless of quality. So it's much less a generational thing than it is human nature.
What do 47 year olds know?
Submitted by njwilson on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:10 AM PDT.
There was a fantastic op-ed piece in the NY Times, I think it was 12-26-87, "what do 47 year olds know?"
It had a quiz with questions such as:
35% of the graduating class at Yale...
a) enrolled in the armed forces
b) studied cooking in France or
c) enrolled as trainees on Wall Street.
If you wanted to run for the Senate you should read ...
a) the Federalist Papers
b) the Constitution
c) How to Master Television Makeup
The extra credit question was:
Name 10 living American Poets, recite one of their poems, and explain its influence on your life.
Too hard, how about 5?
OK forget the poems, name 5 living American Poets, OK how about just 1?
Forget all that. Who is better LeBron or Kobe?
The point of the Op-Ed was that kids learn what they need to know. It ain't the same as what we needed to know. But that don't mean they're stupid.
This isn't that new an idea
Submitted by Frank (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:16 AM PDT.
Pardon me for bringing out my Johnson: "Knowledge is of two kinds... "
http://www.samueljohnson.com/knowledg.html#118
But then of course, nothing is new under the sun!
Changes in the Past
Submitted by Bill Harshaw on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:27 AM PDT.
Easy access to books may have already changed how we think (so it would be logical for the Internet to make further changes). I vaguely remember something on Lincoln--books were scarce so he had memorized much of Shakespeare. And centuries before that scholars were being taught how to memorize incredible things (see the "memory palace of [someone I forget]. Do any school kids memorize any poems at all these days? I doubt it.
different smarts
Submitted by alan (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:30 AM PDT.
A couple of years ago there was an article about how researchers had identified two contrasting ways of being smart, essentially casting a wide net and having a narrow focus, which then, I seem to recall, described each in terms of political affiliation with the wide net people voting more liberal, and the narrow focus people voting more conservative.
If this description of how the internet is affecting people is correct it seems that it would an evolutionary force for liberalism.
but how do you find a good book?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:32 AM PDT.
I've started many more non-fiction books than I've finished, not because my attention span is short, but because most are poorly written, unable to support their premises, etc. Popular accounts are released in a timely manner, but aren't any deeper than the net. More academic treatments take years to produce and release. Once again, it turns out Sturgeon was right.
My mom is a longtime
Submitted by jm (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 11:34 AM PDT.
My mom is a longtime schoolteacher and we were talking the other day about the Internet and education and so forth. One thing we agreed on was that schools at all levels should teach critical thinking as a discipline -- not just as sort of an implied part of a general education, but as a specific set of cognitive tools and approaches to use in assembling and interpreting information. I think this has always been lacking in our education systems, but it is even more crucial now for exactly the reasons mentioned above. With so much information so easily accessible, the how and why of putting it all together and figuring out what it means (or doesn't mean) is a set of essential skills. I agree that reading more books helps, but it's really a matter of learning critical thought processes (which will, among other things, lead you to books).
If I started a school, I'd put it right in the curriculum: reading, writing, math, history, critical thinking.
What we need to learn
Submitted by MarkH on Tue May. 12, 2009 5:16 PM PDT.
Here's a try...
The Universe
Sciences
Humans
Communication skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening, maths, music, design
Thinking skills: logic, rhetoric, critique, etc.
Who we were and are
The works of Humans
History: political, religious, technological, societal, economic systems, arts, etc.
The Future
imagination, movie-making, creative-writing, etc.
Why books?
Submitted by Outlandish Josh (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 12:13 PM PDT.
Hey old man! Why must you read books per se to grasp deep subjects? I'm not arguing against assimilating large volumes of in-depth knowledge, but I don't agree in the slightest bit that this necessitates the traditional book-reading experience. Not that there's anything wrong with it, mind you, just saying. ;)
There's a lot more to "the internet" than Teh Google and reading some guys blog. That's still really a read-only activity, and even though it's powerful it's not really the revolutionary thing. The revolutionary thing about the internet is that it enables active participation in the discovery and production of knowledge and context by just about anyone. You can learn a lot from a wiki and a mailing list.
The most critical innovation is instant access to encylopedic knowledge, but rather low-barriers to participation in a global community of inquiry. Want to talk about grokking context? Getting involved in an living-breathing discussion and co-production of knowledge. Not only gives great context, it also fosters critical thinking and procedural literacy. See Paulo Frere and John Dewey for the details.
The Introductory Internet ...
Submitted by al-Fubar (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 12:59 PM PDT.
When I have looked up subjects I'm interested in and have read a lot about, what I generally find on the Internet is some good introductory material, sometimes a lot of it, but very little in depth.
Critical thinking versus data retrieval
Submitted by CybScryb (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 2:06 PM PDT.
I've found as I've become older that I'm more comfortable leaving the storage of data on the web while focusing on knowing where to mine the data needed. While not all of the web contains all the data I need...I find that my specific, tiny percentage contains most of what I need. Best of all, the information on the web that is active tends to be updated regularly. Rather like a volume on my bookshelf updating itself while sitting on the shelf. So when I'm designing a new transmission-line loudspeaker, the books are the same as they were twenty or thirty years ago. When I use the web resources, I find that if the math has been refined; or the material I typically use has been deprecated in favor of something new and more inert, I'll be informed of said fact the next time I log onto the site.
Lingerie catalogs are now obsolete
Submitted by Deep Pixel (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 2:35 PM PDT.
The Internet has made the Victoria's Secret catalog completely unnecessary.
Victoria's Secret catalog?
Submitted by Trippp on Tue May. 12, 2009 4:13 PM PDT.
The Internet has made the Victoria's Secret catalog completely unnecessary.
Why Deep Pixel, you young pup. In my day we had to make do with the JC Penny's underwear and swimsuit sections.
Tripp
Nope
Submitted by Paul Camp (not verified) on Tue May. 12, 2009 7:14 PM PDT.
My brother reads a ton of books. He's smart but ignorant, if you know what I mean. He believes in the water carburetor, for god's sake.
What's lacking is not the reading of books but the solving of problems. Using knowledge is what connects it to other knowledge, not finding knowledge nor watching it sit next to other knowledge.
mile wide inch deep: not necessarily
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed May. 13, 2009 7:01 AM PDT.
There are so many forms of knowledge and the Internet pipes are good for daily news an opinion (better than any one newspaper obviously). They are also unbeatable at getting a talking knowledge about a subject, say angular momentum conservation, but real knowledge about that subject is something quite different and requires years of personal involvement in doing problems and learning math. Only a good book can take you on that journey (although as more professors put their lecture notes on line that will soon not be true). The point being that real knowledge about a subject takes a long term personal commitment and the internet unfortunately gives people a false sense that they understand a subject because they have talking points at their finger tips. Now a trashy novel.....
The Internet has made the
Submitted by Rodger Bush (not verified) on Wed May. 13, 2009 10:06 PM PDT.
The Internet has made the Victoria's Secret catalog completely unnecessary.
Is it the same for Numeric
Submitted by ugg boots (not verified) on Wed May. 27, 2009 2:59 AM PDT.
Is it the same for Numeric Gold ? ;-) I have already an account but thanks for sharing !
linksoflondon
Submitted by linksoflondon (not verified) on Mon Jun. 29, 2009 4:47 PM PDT.
Thanks for your suggestion!~
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