QUOTE(The Joy @ Sat 27th February 2010, 3:58pm)
QUOTE(RMHED @ Sat 27th February 2010, 3:35pm)
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.