
Why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks - nreece
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4362950.ece
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mechanical_fish
_This may all be a moral panic, a severe case of the older generation wagging
its finger at the young. It was ever thus._

Here we have the modern cultural critic at work: He doesn't just wag his
finger -- he _deconstructs himself_ at the same time! So, when I point out
that this guy just another in a long line of whining moral scolds, he can
claim that he understood that all along! He was just being _ironic_! Isn't
hipster detachment fun -- even when the guy's wrong, he's right!

So, yeah, he's right: This is a steaming pile of Get Off My Lawn. The big clue
is the part where he loses focus on the issue of focus ( _irony_!) and starts
teeing off on these kids today, who spend all their time on the internet
_gossiping with each other_ instead of reading improving books. Even the
_parodies_ of this line of argument are older than dirt: Before the Internet
it was video games, reality television, cartoons, gangs, pop music, drugs,
punk rock, hard rock, progressive rock, Jimi Hendrix, birth control pills,
Elvis Presley, beatniks, Buddy Holly, swing dance, movie theaters, the wrong
_kind_ of books, jazz clubs, speakeasies, ragtime, billiard parlors, opium
dens, all-night poker games, gangs...

Even the interesting part, the bit about distraction, is old news. Distraction
is, indeed, one of the modern world's biggest sources of stress, unhappiness
and poor productivity, _but that is nothing new_. This guy accurately notes
that concern about information overload dates back to Thoreau's unhappiness
with the telegraph and the newspaper -- and I'd bet the Zen Buddhists would be
willing to argue it goes back even farther. You're telling me that the
Internet is somehow even more pernicious and distracting than leaving the TV
on all day, which has been going on for sixty years? That workers in the
seventies didn't find wired telephones and intercoms and water coolers and
newspapers and muzak distracting? (I guess Demarco and Lister are precogs --
they railed about this stuff in _Peopleware_ before the Web even existed.)

And then, rather than talk about how to _ameliorate_ the information overload
problem, the guy throws up his hands and proclaims that we're doomed to a new
Dark Age (!). Just as we have been since Thoreau. After all, what important
things have happened since 1849?

Being a moral scold is easy work. Each year you write the same essay with a
couple of words changed.

~~~
tjr
I'm not sure the internet is necessarily any "worse" than TV or whatever in
this regard, but its threat is more disguised. When you're wasting time with
superficial information on the web, you're still _using a computer!_ And there
is so much useful information on the web, _how could using the web be a bad
thing?_

On the surface, it appears to be a more productive activity than watching
television. It is more interactive, and it does require more skills to get
going with it than television does. But once you get past that, it can still
all too easily turn into a waste of time.

~~~
mechanical_fish
There was a time when television was considered a valuable source of important
information about the world. The idea that TV is intrinsically stupid didn't
really have popular traction until Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" speech in
the 1960s.

I agree that the web is more subtle, especially today, when the chrome has yet
to wear off. But no medium is free from time-wasting. History is replete with
people whose reading and writing was arguably "a waste of time". It's
certainly replete with artists, musicians, and writers whose tendency to focus
obsessively on their hobby was bad for their finances and their health.
Ramanujan arguably worked himself to death with _mathematics_.

~~~
thwarted
I remember back in the 80s there was this trend to outfit schools with a
television in every room, as television was going to be some kind of
teaching/learning holy grail. Then it was never used for that, and I remember
a lot of the televisions going unused.

------
ericwaller
"One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average
knowledge worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588
billion a year."

There's this myth in America that it's possible to work non-stop for 8
straight hours a day. Distractions maybe unhealthy and negatively impact
productivity, but this statistic certainly does not demonstrate that.

~~~
pchristensen
I'd get much more done if I could work 4+2+1+1 hours scattered throughout the
day (say 9pm-1am, 7am-8am, 12pm-2pm, and 3-4pm). 8 straight is brutal and
hardly ever all used.

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baha_man
Maybe my brain has been fried by spending too much time on Hacker News, but
isn't there an 'it is' missing from the title?

'Tests clearly show that a switched-on television reduces the quality and
quantity of interaction between children and their parents. The internet
multiplies the effect a thousandfold.'

If you've got scientific evidence to back up your claims, please link to it.
I'd like to know what the SI unit for parent/child interaction is.

I don't like the article much, but has anyone read the book he refers to?

~~~
khafra
I, for one, would talk to my parents a lot more if they were on IRC.

~~~
Zev
I thought that as well - that i would talk to my parents more if they spoke
via AIM/MSN/IRC. Then they actually got onto AIM and started talking. And I
started calling them up (if at college) or going into the other room (if
during break).

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maurycy
I'm sorry but I can't read this article. There are many others that need my
attention.

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kleevr
Just reed a book nao an agan. Prblm solvd, k thanks!

Seriously though, I've been hearing similar messages for a while. It's a scary
prospect, but I really think the solution is as easy as reading books.

An aside: I used to think that computers would increase literacy rates, as a
typing/reading were prerequisites to internet use. But, seeing how many people
spend their 'surf time' just watching videos on YouTube I'm starting to think
otherwise.

~~~
ricree
I suppose that it depends on how low you set the bar for what is considered
literacy.

~~~
unalone
I think it's a matter of how HIGH the bar is showing itself right now. I mean,
upper literature has never been commonplace entertainment, not any more than
it is right now. Back in the 20s people weren't all discussing the finer
points of Steinbeck and Faulkner. We only remember those guys now and assume
everybody was like them - and that therefore we've dropped - but I'd guess we
have more people into upper literature now than they had back then.

The problem is that cultures change so rapidly. We have a hundred new mediums
presenting themselves every decade, and each of us finds solitude in a
different sort. It's natural for some people to prefer texting over
literature, just as it's natural for some of us to shun the Internet entirely.
I think the Internet gets this more than the literati do. We get that just
because fewer people read books doesn't mean that there's a threat of books
vanishing altogether. It means that the market gets smaller and more focused,
and you get a much cozier reading community. I'd guess that of the students I
was with in high school you could get a good 40% to write a decent essay if
you needed one - and that's a high percentage, when you compare that with the
percentage of people who need to be able to write decent essays in life.

Shakespeare couldn't spell his own name, from the fragments we have of his
writing. He wasn't "literate" by the bar this article would like to set. He
just came up with play ideas and figured out how to word things vocally. He
created what we'd call great literature without the tools that we assume
literature needs to get started.

As I said: the Internet gets it. The sci-fi literate get it, too: and no
surprise, since the best science fiction writers today are on the truly
cutting edge of literature. It's the conservative literati that still doesn't
understand that literature changes with every decade, that what's true today
might not be in 2010, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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pavelludiq
A few years ago i read an article that computer games brainwash kids, and that
red alert 2 promoted fascism. Its a good strategy, if you want attention
predict the end of the world, and stupid people start paying attention to you.
The most read news papers are the ones with gossip about celebrities, there is
no news here, most people are stupid and use the internet accordingly to their
abilities, these are the same people that read yellow press and watch reality
TV, its not the technology thats the problem, its the people.

------
dangrover
"We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"

