
'The Dumbest Generation' - byrneseyeview
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,3980465.story
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orib
I'm getting tired of these "The Internet Makes Us Dumb" and "People can't read
on the internet"... These articles are usually so poorly read that I give up
trying to make sense of them. I have no problem reading large, thick books,
and will often work through a well written 400 page novel in maybe a day or
so. I'll also sit and read through an interesting article on line, when it
deals with relevant issues.

Maybe people stop reading your articles half way through because they're dull,
meaningless luddite whines, and not because they've gotten stupider?

Can we stop posting these "damn kids get off my lawn" sort of posts? there are
enough real problems with society these days that we don't need to make up
crap about how reading online makes us dumb.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I think the author is talking about the average person, not about you. The
Internet makes it very, very easy to tune into something trashy.

I'm not sure it's productive to claim that a culture of ignorance is less
important than other problems. If you don't fix that, everything else gets
worse. If people start to believe that it's important to do an actual job
well, not to vote in a giant election or a TV show or a social news site, many
problems will disappear.

~~~
orib
As I said, there are enough real problems with society that we don't need to
make up hogwash about how the internet is us stupider.

Real problems, like a broken education system where the intelligent children
with a desire to learn are bored to tears, and just stop trying in school, all
in the name of bringing up people who can't -- or don't want to -- learn well
enough to keep up.

Real problems like a culture of unquestioning consumption of both material and
nonmaterial items.

Real problems like people's apathy towards their environment -- the
communities that they are part of, the health of the planet they're living on,
et al.

I could go on.

If anything, tuning into interactive trash is a step or two above what
generations have been doing since the 1960s -- tuning into TV, and turning off
their minds.

I see the current inanity of many parts of the internet as a product of this
culture of ignorance that you're speaking of, and not the cause.

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mattmaroon
This article makes the fatal assumption that people's reading and internet
usage habits don't mature along with the rest of their personalities. Sure
teens might spend all day gossiping on MySpace, and college students trolling
Facebook for hookups, but that's not that much different than what both groups
have done offline since time immemorial. And just like previous generations
they'll grow up, get jobs, have families, and change their habits.

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run4yourlives
Before we write the book on the "dumbest" generation, we need to write the one
about the "worst generation". That would be the boomers. Nobody has
collectively fubared things up as much as they have.

~~~
Angostura
Yes, that's exactly the kind of trite understanding of history that the author
is worried about. Well done.

... and no, I'm not a boomer.

~~~
run4yourlives
How often something is repeated bears little to no relation to how true it may
or may not be.

Several of the reasons I feel it is correct to nominate boomers for that
degrading title are perfectly valid. But feel free to continue ad-hominem if
you wish.

~~~
mtts
Please provide some of those reasons then. I'm curious. There's a lot of them
and they're wealthier than most of us will ever be, but the worst generation?

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linkup
I reviewed the book and had a different take on it:
[http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2008/06/24/the-dumbest-
generati...](http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2008/06/24/the-dumbest-generation/)

