The Internet Makes Us Dumb…
This kind of stilted ignorance is what makes people stand out as not knowing a blind thing about the internet outside the crap (read YouTube, MySpace etc.) that floats to the top of popular culture. The Internet is a tool, a medium and a network for sharing and expanding on information. I hold no grudges against people who use that facility to share videos of cats on ceiling fans or skateboarding dogs because they find it entertaining. The internet is a free space afterall.
The fact is a lot of users do more than that, much more with the internet. Take Flickr.com for example. How would I have known what sunset looked like in San Francisco looked like or the beauty of Yellowstone National Park were it not for that? Wikipedia also (although always taken with a pinch of salt) is a great pool of knowledge. It’s like having an army of geeks all waiting to tell you about their favourite subject.
The popular press used to refer to the Internet as the ‘Information Superhighway’. In a lot of ways they weren’t wrong. Google is your GPS, i.e. it’s not a perfect 100% accurate guide but most of the time it gets you where you want to be on the web. Turn off at any intersection (search result) and you can drive into many back roads and everything from small townships to megacities of people and information. It’s mind blowing just how much information is out there.
Far from making us dumb, the internet, if we are taught to use it to it’s maximum potential (and that’s an importnant ‘if’ because I don’t think people are yet) a mind *expander* not a dumbing down tool.
