/Big Question/ Dumb and dumber
13/02/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
The new Nobel laureate novelist Doris Lessing says the internet is making us dumb. What do you think?
Digital rights activist
Danny O’Brien
Electronic frontier foundation
I thought it was a shame. Lessing made the throwaway remark while talking about the strong desire for books in Zimbabwe, among people who had no food to eat, and compared that to our own dismissive approach to literature, which she seems to partially blame on the internet. My own bias is that the hunger for books Lessing describes is more related to knowledge than literature. I remember visiting Zambia, Zimbabwe’s neighbour, in 2000, and was struggling to explain my job to my hosts, a small tribe that was moving away from subsistence living to experimenting with crops. I said that I worked with the internet, which was this way you could ask any question and get ten replies, but you would never know which ones were true. We talked a little more: the man who was growing crops, Gilbert, said that getting knowledge was the hardest thing, because anyone who helped them would give them answers, but never tell them where they got those answers from.
I think hoarding the answers, as we do, certainly makes Zimbabwe and other developing countries hungrier. But sharing knowledge, as the internet allows us, doesn’t diminish us, and gives us an opportunity to give millions of books in one go, rather than just one at a time, as Lessing desires. We shouldn’t fetishize either the containers that knowledge comes in, or the pain of a time when distributing it was so much harder.
Internet playboy
Drew Curtis
Fark
She’s almost right. The internet isn’t making us dumb, it’s evidence that we’re already dumb.
Interactive media
Paul Dawson
Conchango
No, the internet is making us smart. It’s also enabling us to drill deeper into current issues, rather than relying on ‘the few’ who previously held this knowledge and imparted it to us in a dumbed down way in the press, on TV and in literature.
Instead of accepting this, we are seeing a consumer trend that we call ‘cultural rebooting’ where media consumers are not accepting a surface level skim and are looking for more. A trend borne out by the rise in circulation of Sunday newspapers where there is a deeper insight into society and culture, whilst the daily newspaper circulations are falling. This, plus the rise and rise of Wikipedia, and the increase in sharing and developing potentially world changing ideas through social and professional networks.
We are talking more, with more people, we are researching and reading more, across more diverse sources – how can this possibly make us dumb? Oh, did you mean videos on YouTube of people jumping off roofs... ? Ah yes, you’re right: it is making us dumb. Sorry, don’t know what I was thinking!
I guess Doris knows as much about the internet as her daily newspaper tells her!
Software expert
Ian Moulster
Microsoft
It’s really easy to forget that the internet has only been around for a short time and that the world got along pretty well before we all got broadband. And similarly, I remember when we only had four TV channels (or even three) and they didn’t broadcast 24 hours a day. But things have changed and there’s no doubt that we all have an incredible amount of information available to us, more so than we would ever have guessed only 20 years ago. All of which is hardly news, even if we rarely take that step back and think about it. So the fact that we have this gigantic amount of information at our fingertips (literally in the case of the internet) is not in dispute. It’s whether we’re any better off for it that is the really worthwhile question.
On the face of it, the answer must surely be “yes”. After all, are we really saying that we’d be better off
knowing less, at having less information available to us? That seems counterintuitive. But what Doris Lessing seems to be saying is that the real answer is “no”, we’re not better off. In fact we’re worse off, strange as that may seem. The reason? Because the vast bulk of this additional information that wasn’t available previously is at best trivial and banal, and at worst harmful. It’s as easy to find pictures of porn as it is to find pictures of prawns, and as easy to find examples of hatred and intolerance as it is to find examples of uplifting, funny, human warmth. And indeed it’s easy to find mountains of pointless, even worthless, rubbish.
But is this a bad thing? I would argue that it is, only if we are prepared to passively let it lead us to places we don’t want to go. Whatever the ratio of worthwhile to worthless (however you judge each) the fact is that there is significantly more worthwhile information immediately available to you than ever before as long as you’re prepared to look for it. You can choose to simply ignore, or not participate in the bad, the worthless, or the downright harmful information.
I prefer to have that choice and to actively make that choice. The internet is a wonderful thing, made wonderful by my willingness to choose. And so I choose and feel better and richer for it.
Internet researcher
Alex Burmaster
Nielsen/NetRatings
Overall, I would have to disagree with this statement. Whilst there could be a diminishing tendency for people to permanently learn new things as they subconsciously know they can turn to the internet to find out almost anything on a piecemeal, case-by-case basis, this is far outweighed by the positive. The internet has brought an unrivalled and unprecedented amount of information and knowledge to the fingertips of the hundreds of millions of people online. It is also fostering a new drive in people to share not only knowledge and insight but elements of their own personal lives and experiences from which we can all learn and make sense of the world around to us, to a degree that has never been seen in the history of mankind.
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK
It is undoubtedly difficult to evaluate the impact of any one development on the intelligence of a generation. What the internet has certainly made possible is that everyone with access to a computer, regardless of their intelligence, can express their opinion. Being on MySpace, Ms Lessing must have experienced the full brunt of this phenomenon. Whether the internet has caused people to become less intelligent, or whether they are simply more visible, is debatable.
What the internet has helped us to do is increase the speed and reach of our communications. For example, a letter which would previously have taken days to deliver can now be sent in an email in seconds. The news can be updated within minutes, academic information can be accessed from anywhere and historical documents can be preserved for millennia. The importance of this ability should not be underestimated. As a species, we have complemented the slow, lumbering force of evolution with the rapid intra-generational force of cultural change, using communication methods such as behaviour, language, written material and now the internet. This capacity, to change our behaviour within, rather than between, generations has had a profound impact, allowing us to pass on knowledge within minutes – from how to make fire and fashion a spear, to writing technical manuals for nuclear reactors.
However, the internet is a neutral territory, and how it is used is largely dependent on us. If it is making us stupid, it is because it reflects our stupidity. But I suspect that the truth, as usual, is far from this simple.
Activist
Oxblood Ruffin
Hactivismo
I’m pleased to see that Ms Lessing has received this honor. She’s a fine writer and she’s made a big difference to a lot of people’s lives. And I disagree with her. IMO, the internet is making us smarter. I don’t think that it’s either/or, but both and.
No one ever got smarter by reading a book alone. Joseph Stalin read books. If he’d had access to a computer maybe things would have worked out differently. Who knows?
I think what Miss Doris was saying was that there’s a lot of crap on the internet. Almost as much as there is in the meat-space publishing world. The trick is to know how to filter out the dross. That’s a good thing to learn.
Hosting provider
Neil Hodson
1&1 Internet Ltd
To an extent, Ms Lessing is right: we have changed. Whilst the internet has undoubtedly been the most powerful educative tool in history and brought all types of knowledge to within a few clicks, it has made the average user extremely lazy and complacent about retaining that knowledge. The ability to source information so quickly has led us to value it less. Because we can source it so easily, and know we can re-source it if necessary, our ability to recall knowledge discovered online is far less effective than if we have dug it out of a library book. It sounds clichéd, but it’s simply true that most of us can recall things we discovered from books years ago, but struggle to recall basic online information read only a few days ago.
I have always noticed that individuals are conditioned to analyse online information far less than printed sources, and most of us find ourselves at times willing to cut and paste or paraphrase online material without completely digesting or understanding it. I guess this is simply our way of coping with information-overload and if we recognise this problem, this could in time be remedied.
Search expert
François Bourdoncle
Exalead
The warning from Lessing that the internet has seduced a generation, leading to us living in a fragmenting culture where people read nothing and know nothing of the world, couldn’t be further from the truth. The internet has actually brought people together like never before. I know I am not the only one to become reacquainted with school friends through social networking sites and find new like-minded individuals through Baagz and have the ability to connect with them and share information – thus adding in turn to the overall internet information source.
In 2008, when one needs to find information, there are three ways to do this: bookmark pages online, use a search engine or ask a friend – two of these are online so I couldn’t refute more clearly that internet users know nothing of the world. The internet is in fact a worldwide library, open 24/7 that anyone can access for information and further their intellect.
Comments
Wiimaster / 14/02/2008 / 07:17 / http://www.wiiclub.de
Well, I think it's like with every new medium - in the end it's your choice.
TV also make us dumb or smart, radio also makes us dumb or smart, even newspapers make us dumb or smart. In the end, I think - if you're dumb you stay dumb, if you're smart, you stay smart.
And usually the people that are too lazy or afraid to keep up with new technologies are not the smartest one.
Who's dump now?
vinod / 19/02/2008 / 13:54
"No, the internet is making us smart." - Paul Dawson, I agreeing with this comment and adding few more sentences. It reduced the distance between nations and minds of people. It is a smart information provider. It providing livelyhood to lot of people. It increased the employment opportunities.
Mike Touch / 06/04/2008 / 00:49 / http://freeipodsetc.co.uk
The internet is not making us dumb. It has opened a whole new world to millions of people. You can instantly search for news and information which was not possible before.
