The Internet and Us.
The article The Web We Need to Give Students by Audrey Watters, Does the Internet Make Us Smarter? by Clay Shirky and the video A Vision of Today’s Students depict a world in which classes are primarily online, communication is online, and the future is online. This is not a difficult world to imagine since we are currently experiencing the transition between physical materials to digital. Since, the Internet is everywhere this is a reasonable shift, it would mean that information is more accessible and cheap.
This sounds great and all but, it makes you think, ANY information can easily be shared that means that incorrect information can be easily spread. The fact that our society is moving in this direction does have some negative backlash such as the article Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr suggests. He argues that information can easily be found online although people do not bother actually retain the information or retain incorrect information. He argues that technology is hurtful, that society as a whole reads less books and society has become too accustom to instant information.
I believe that technology is our future for many reasons. Times change, meaning the way we get our information changes. Today, most if not all the information students learn is online. It doesn’t mean the Internet is good or bad, it’s just different. I believe that the hesitation to the change is likely due to being stubborn. In the past there was backlash to books which we now consider important for preserving information. This transition is essentially that, a new form of record keeping that can be more beneficial than books in some ways. Systems can always be improved and someone to say that no improvements can be made on anything is just stubborn.
On another note we could also get into the amount of time people spend on their laptops and computers surfing the web. Which could have an impact on face to face social skills, an essential part of being a human. We could then discuss the amount of discipline it take to stay focused when using the internet. We could take any of these situation a step further but the point is that these ideas are all objective.
