The Web Is Making People Stupid, TWIMPS And Getting TWIMPSER Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

It's all a plot by Alien Wiki-Φungi …

Or maybe Ripofflichens …

Or Groople …

Some truly evil force like that …

The fact that Sarah Palin gets any press at all is proof that the condition is terminal …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

[RMHED]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

[The Joy]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

Indeed. The Internet acts as a megaphone for people, both the stupid and the smart. It doesn't help that the quantity of information has increased with the help of the Internet, but at the expense of good quality information. You have to be a good detective with great information literacy to find the diamonds in the rough.

[MZMcBride]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

Indeed. The Internet acts as a megaphone for people, both the stupid and the smart. It doesn't help that the quantity of information has increased with the help of the Internet, but at the expense of good quality information. You have to be a good detective with great information literacy to find the diamonds in the rough.

The issue I have with a good portion of the criticism on this site is that, as you say, it's a symptom of the Internet (or the Information Age, I guess), while many people here blame individual components like Wikipedia. Wikipedia may be an example case, but it's hardly to blame for the giant shift that's been witnessed over the past fifteen to twenty years.

[Jon Awbrey]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

Indeed. The Internet acts as a megaphone for people, both the stupid and the smart. It doesn't help that the quantity of information has increased with the help of the Internet, but at the expense of good quality information. You have to be a good detective with great information literacy to find the diamonds in the rough.

The issue I have with a good portion of the criticism on this site is that, as you say, it's a symptom of the Internet (or the Information Age, I guess), while many people here blame individual components like Wikipedia. Wikipedia may be an example case, but it's hardly to blame for the giant shift that's been witnessed over the past fifteen to twenty years.

¤ sigh ¤

I can't say it any better than this —

George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

Indeed. The Internet acts as a megaphone for people, both the stupid and the smart. It doesn't help that the quantity of information has increased with the help of the Internet, but at the expense of good quality information. You have to be a good detective with great information literacy to find the diamonds in the rough.

The issue I have with a good portion of the criticism on this site is that, as you say, it's a symptom of the Internet (or the Information Age, I guess), while many people here blame individual components like Wikipedia. Wikipedia may be an example case, but it's hardly to blame for the giant shift that's been witnessed over the past fifteen to twenty years.

¤ sigh ¤

I can't say it any better than this —

George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

A few spare ergs in my brain-basket this morning, so maybe I'll try to unscramble the entropy thereof.

There are indeed more general phenomena afoot here — that's the very reason for the existence of this Meta*Discussion Forum.

What led me to open this thread, specifically, was that I had started noticing similar developments taking place at many different fora and e-gora across the web. Nothing new under the sun as far as human nature goes, of course, but it looks like there are specific technical factors on the rise that are blocking the best and catalyzing the worst in the way of critical, reflective, independent thought.

So … what are those stupefying factors, exactly?

Jon Awbrey

[Milton Roe]

The web isn't making people stupid, people have always been stupid, it's hardwired into humanity (and thus will ensure our timely destruction.)

Indeed. The Internet acts as a megaphone for people, both the stupid and the smart. It doesn't help that the quantity of information has increased with the help of the Internet, but at the expense of good quality information. You have to be a good detective with great information literacy to find the diamonds in the rough.

The issue I have with a good portion of the criticism on this site is that, as you say, it's a symptom of the Internet (or the Information Age, I guess), while many people here blame individual components like Wikipedia. Wikipedia may be an example case, but it's hardly to blame for the giant shift that's been witnessed over the past fifteen to twenty years.

¤ sigh ¤

I can't say it any better than this —

George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

A few spare ergs in my brain-basket this morning, so maybe I'll try to unscramble the entropy thereof.

There are indeed more general phenomena afoot here — that's the very reason for the existence of this Meta*Discussion Forum.

What led me to open this thread, specifically, was that I had started noticing similar developments taking place at many different fora and e-gora across the web. Nothing new under the sun as far as human nature goes, of course, but it looks like there are specific technical factors on the rise that are blocking the best and catalyzing the worst in the way of critical, reflective, independent thought.

So … what are those stupefying factors, exactly?

Jon Awbrey

Well, besides the usual complaint about e-"publishing"? Once upon a time, publishing was intimately connected with EDITING, because publishing was intrinically expensive. Involving as it did materials like paper and ink, and requiring a lot of skilled work from typesetters, printers, and the like, and then needing distribution costs for newspapers, magazines, journals, and books.

Okay, so take away all the intrinsic material costs of publishing, or nearly all. Now suddenly, the EDITING becomes the most expensive part. So then, what happens that we start to get competition from e-published stuff that hasn't been edited at all, or has been inadequately edited? This would have been stupid or unlikely in the old days when good editing was only a fraction of publication costs, and was essential to picking out only the good stuff to publish, which was in turn intrinsically expensive to publish. Decouple these functions now, and you get replication of "printed" material, with no selection. The evolutionary process which once drove quality-improvement in the written word, now breaks down, because half the critical mechanism has been turned off. There's no selection of good material on the production end.

Okay, now e-Malthus demands that there must be selection SOMEWHERE, since we can't read the garbage as fast as it appears on teh web. So where does that selection happen, now? Well, Google does it. Bing wants to do it. In large part, the buzz from popular interest does it. But that sort of thing amplifies pop culture and doesn't work so well for academics and knowledge. Hence the little demo the other day about pop culture articles vs. articles about weightier things on wikipedia. That's true of everyplace on the web.

No solution for this do I see. It's been the case for thousands of years that people have resisted paying for pure information, even though information is actually most of what you buy, with most products. Instead, those who sold information were forced to package it up with something else, some material, and sell the material "thing." A book being the prime example-- you sell the physical book to get people to buy the novel, but if they can get the novel without having to buy the book, they'll steal the novel. It's the same with health advice. People will not pay what health advice is worth. If they would, doctors could make living talking to people on the phone, or sending them videotapes. Forget it. Even alternative people can't make a living doing that-- they have to sell fancy packaged nutritional supplements, or else go broke. Those supplements are basically information, but packed in a way that to get the information you have to buy the thing.

The internet, with its capacity to reproduce and transmit "information," for closer and closer to nothing, has become the ultimate counterfeiter for what used to be the currency of knowledge. And per Gresham's Law of the Information Jungle, bad information is in the process of driving out good. Information inflation has now set in, and the currency is devalued. Attempts to establish gold standards for knowledge are resisted on every side. The idea that not everybody can (or should) print $100 bills, is held to be elitist.

Ah, well. Back to making "things." If you think you're going to make a living by thinking, and selling your thoughts in print to somebody, you'd better think some more about that. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

A few spare ergs in my brain-basket this morning, so maybe I'll try to unscramble the entropy thereof.

There are indeed more general phenomena afoot here — that's the very reason for the existence of this Meta*Discussion Forum.

What led me to open this thread, specifically, was that I had started noticing similar developments taking place at many different fora and e-gora across the web. Nothing new under the sun as far as human nature goes, of course, but it looks like there are specific technical factors on the rise that are blocking the best and catalyzing the worst in the way of critical, reflective, independent thought.

So … what are those stupefying factors, exactly?

Jon Awbrey

Well, besides the usual complaint about e-"publishing"? Once upon a time, publishing was intimately connected with EDITING, because publishing was intrinsically expensive. Involving as it did materials like paper and ink, and requiring a lot of skilled work from typesetters, printers, and the like, and then needing distribution costs for newspapers, magazines, journals, and books.

Okay, so take away all the intrinsic material costs of publishing, or nearly all. Now suddenly, the EDITING becomes the most expensive part. So then, what happens that we start to get competition from e-published stuff that hasn't been edited at all, or has been inadequately edited? This would have been stupid or unlikely in the old days when good editing was only a fraction of publication costs, and was essential to picking out only the good stuff to publish, which was in turn intrinsically expensive to publish. Decouple these functions now, and you get replication of "printed" material, with no selection. The evolutionary process which once drove quality-improvement in the written word, now breaks down, because half the critical mechanism has been turned off. There's no selection of good material on the production end.

Okay, now e-Malthus demands that there must be selection SOMEWHERE, since we can't read the garbage as fast as it appears on teh web. So where does that selection happen, now? Well, Google does it. Bing wants to do it. In large part, the buzz from popular interest does it. But that sort of thing amplifies pop culture and doesn't work so well for academics and knowledge. Hence the little demo the other day about pop culture articles vs. articles about weightier things on wikipedia. That's true of everyplace on the web.

No solution for this do I see. It's been the case for thousands of years that people have resisted paying for pure information, even though information is actually most of what you buy, with most products. Instead, those who sold information were forced to package it up with something else, some material, and sell the material "thing." A book being the prime example — you sell the physical book to get people to buy the novel, but if they can get the novel without having to buy the book, they'll steal the novel. It's the same with health advice. People will not pay what health advice is worth. If they would, doctors could make living talking to people on the phone, or sending them videotapes. Forget it. Even alternative people can't make a living doing that — they have to sell fancy packaged nutritional supplements, or else go broke. Those supplements are basically information, but packed in a way that to get the information you have to buy the thing.

The internet, with its capacity to reproduce and transmit "information," for closer and closer to nothing, has become the ultimate counterfeiter for what used to be the currency of knowledge. And per Gresham's Law of the Information Jungle, bad information is in the process of driving out good. Information inflation has now set in, and the currency is devalued. Attempts to establish gold standards for knowledge are resisted on every side. The idea that not everybody can (or should) print $100 bills, is held to be elitist.

Ah, well. Back to making "things." If you think you're going to make a living by thinking, and selling your thoughts in print to somebody, you'd better think some more about that. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

That's all, well, um, bad — but I was actually trying to talk about something else, something like the quality of communication in our so-called "community" sites. That's kind of what I meant by "fora and e-gora" — here I was searching for some word beside "discussion" since the owners of one site I had in mind go out of their way to stress that it's "not about discussion", even though they do have their own meta-discussion forum for doing just that.

So I'm looking for those bug/features of system accident/design that catalyze the catatonia of genuine collaborative inquiry.

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

I was actually trying to talk about something else, something like the quality of communication in our so-called “community” sites. That's kind of what I meant by “fora and e-gora” — here I was searching for some word beside “discussion” since the owners of one site I had in mind go out of their way to stress that it's “not about discussion”, even though they do have their own meta-discussion forum for doing just that.

So I'm looking for those bug/features of system accident/design that catalyze the catatonia of genuine collaborative inquiry.

Continuing Discussion on the Dumbing ↓ Device —

Nicholas Carr, “Does The Internet Make You Dumber?”, Wall Street Journal, 05 Jun 2010.

I know it's a little crusty, but it keeps being re-cycled on Facebook.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)