Are we getting smarter or dumber?
Measuring ourselves against past generations may be useless I'm afraid. The metrics and standards have changed. Probably for the worse. Consult Juvenal. We've been complaining of decadence for centuries. So either we've been on a slow decent to nothingness all this time or it's the opposite.
"After all, when those of us in The Middle Years (or even older) were in our teens and twenties, we knew utterly everything, whereas the Youth of Today know almost nothing. This holds true despite the fact that they can look up anything almost instantly, whereas those of us who came along before wireless Internet access had to acquire knowledge by any number of arduous means, including walking to the library or even, if all else failed, asking an Old Person for help."
It's a question of curiosity. Those of us from the "pre-internet" days generally got our knowledge past down from our elders or sought it out. If you lacked curiosity, you weren't gonna search for much. Just like the kids of today despite greater resources at their disposal.
The rate of curiosity, I suppose, remains constant no matter what era.
Weird... I took classes my parents took in college when I was in high school (calculus, for example). I also learned information that didn't even exist when my parents went to school. So... I think by any measure, new generations do learn more raw knowledge as a whole, at least through education.
ReplyDeleteAs for the internet... kind of a double-edged sword. Lot of information out there, but also a lot of misinformation. I think schools have missed an opportunity to use the internet to teach the one thing schools need to start teaching: critical thinking.
I'll go with Bret on this one.
ReplyDeleteI think people haven't even begun to harness the power of the internet.
ReplyDeleteI think people haven't even begun to harness the power of the internet.
ReplyDeleteYou forget Nikk Jakson and his amazing harnessing powers!