

Clay Shirky: Does the Internet Make You Smarter? - ckuehne
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_lifeStyle

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petercooper
It certainly makes people read and write more. When I was a teen (and the
Internet wasn't mainstream), most of my friends didn't write or type a single
word that wasn't for school purposes. I think that was pretty typical.

Now? The average 13 year old seems to give the average Gen Y'er a run for
their money on the keyboard skills, and they're pumping out all sorts of text.
There's been an explosion in written communications between semi-literate
types that would have been alien to us back in the early 90s.

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pigbucket
The article doesn't really address the question posed in the sexy title, as
you begin to do. The kind of proliferation of writing that worried Luther and
then Poe and now the "pessimists" mentioned here presents readers with the
intellectual challenge of figuring out what's really authoritative or just
good versus what's throwaway. Poe apparently thought that was an evil, but
maybe meeting that challenge does make people smarter, even if the sci journal
vs. erotic fiction opposition makes it seem easy (I don't want to throw away
the M. de Sade!). "How is the internet changing the way you think?" is an Edge
question. <http://edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html>

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petercooper
_presents readers with the intellectual challenge of figuring out what's
really authoritative or just good versus what's throwaway_

Call me a pessimistic optimist. I think the proliferation of even throwaway
writing is a good thing _but_ I judiciously use the domain name of a page to
determine whether it's throwaway or not ;-)

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what
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1406664>

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mattmaroon
I think he's making arguments that the Internet is making us more
knowledgeable (which is obvious) rather than smarter. Nick Carr's argument was
more that persistent multitasking is damaging our ability to think.

It's possible that technology will make us both dumber and more knowledgeable.

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w33dkid
Again... similar tactic as of the "is silicon valley dead" post. attention!
attention... thats all they want... for the fsckng CTR

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petercooper
Suggest HN: Ignore any query strings on the end of URLs when working out what
links are unique on HN. This would cut down on dupes containing tracking
portions like this.

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celoyd
Many sites’ articles’ addresses are only unique in the query string. For
example, HN’s own discussion pages would all be considered
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item>.

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Avenger42
Why not something that pops up when you submit that says "Looks like your post
could be a copy of these other stories. If yours is different, please check
this box." And if you don't check the box, and your story is a copy, the
system kills the link and hands all the karma to the original story.

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stretchwithme
i think it makes you dumberer

