Some thoughts about era of information

Another thing I was thinking about.
Is there any difference in quality/ complexity and quantity of knowledge between pre- internet generations and us?
I remember that my school books were not even close colorful and illustrated as they are now - like there is enormous effort put to make knowledge fancy and interesting to kids. We had to learn regardless of the form in which knowledge was presented.
Does the era of internet leads to trivializing knowledge which is more than approachable - as opposite to the pre- internet ages when one had to put a really hard effort to find things he/she was interested in…?

It is said that in the era of information, silence is an ignorance.

But have we really became less ignorant?

Even though I was raised before the internet I find myself being ridiculously accepting of information that I pick up on the internet. What the??? I am more open to jumping to conclusions from bits and pieces of knowledge that have no source given, especially in the health field. It is good that we have @SzAdmin and @firemonkey and others to keep the source of information in this forum in the forefront
IMO

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My son has colorful textbooks in school. I had paper copies of the book we used to have in the 80’s. He hates homework as much as I did.

Maybe school books need to look attractive to compete with internet. My son sits by youtube all the time watching “world’s best (anything here)”. Plays with his friends online.

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The growth of the information available for us is exponential. I got my education in the pre-Internet era, but I have used the net since 1993 when the earliest net services (ISPs) became available. There is so much information that people need to educate themselves to screen and filter the information mass in order to get the information meaningful to them. Just thinking how it all will be in the next 20 years, but I like this trend.

Maybe when we get all the information our brains will grow and we shall become big head people. :smiley:

http://api.ning.com/files/ZUnFoIo98B5A6KZ3rtxYLGFN7IXKPnGJJ5m5DYoLzWtEA6G3Ddx5CB*wsvtlsJ9gGAVEElxea56l5QW9Wvu75mmbzgZ0va/2260894625_ea1feecb2a.jpg

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I think the textbooks have changed, not because of the Internet, but because teaching trends have shifted to trying to get kids excited about learning, instead of treating it as a chore. When we were kids, school was a lame thing that you had to do. Now, children actually like going and learning new things.

Sure feels like my head is about to explode when I get too much information at the same time. :smiley:

My daughter has informed me in the past that she doesn’t need to memorize stuff because information is always there when she needs it. Three problems:

  1. The information may not always be there – networks fail. I have had to troubleshoot computers in the absence of the ability to research problems. I’ve had to rely on my own knowledge, experience, and a few honkin’ HUGE tech reference binders I have crammed with printouts of essential stuff.

  2. Without a baseline level of knowledge, you may not have the understanding necessary to process the information you are ingesting in a manner that allows you to use it properly.

  3. If you are not excercising and stretching your brain by working it in terms of memorizing things, you will lose that ability. This has been proven out. Having kids learn to memorize when they’re young gives them that ability as adults.

Unfortunately, there are teachers in my daughter’s school who disagree with the above.

Pixel.

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Philosophy used to be a beautiful thing and kept people happy. Most “knowledge” today is really just theory. You can decide for yourself what to believe in. I tend to create hopeful ideas & theories about the universe & life, as materialism offers no hope & very few genuine answers.

Call me old fashioned, but I’ve been on college and saw how regular students were doing their ‘researches’ and i’ve had a chance to see what does it mean for teens in high school. And my general conclusion is that, for those who tend to look for a ‘getting the job done’ kind of success, and for those who were taught to learn how to reproduct instead of create - internet is more than a double edged sword.

One horibble example is using the Wikipedia as a legitimate source of quoting in essayes that are supposed to teach students about scientific methodology and critical thinking.

More horrifying thing are teachers who let those kids pass with this.

The most horrifying, for me, are pages where you can order/or download every kind of paper for every kind of school project or homework.

So yes, I would say, for natural imitators and for projects of creating mind- obedience, the whole digital medias thing is so risky that we should have a specified class to teach kids about strategies of manipulations in online world.

My first class in college, was Introduction to Art History. In the middle of the class a student puts her hand in the air and asks “Escuse me, what’s a paragraph?”

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I think its a balance… The issue is that the jobs of the future will, its generally expected, require more original thinking - and with smartphones that will become truly smart (and yes, not always connected - but almost always connected to networks) - the emphasis has to be on manipulating the information in a helpful way - not just memorization.

Let me give you an example - in the past London England used to require extremely good knowledge of all the roads around the city - as part of their test to get the Taxi driver license. That is no longer a requirement because of good GPS available 24 X 7 .

And - in the future (nearer future than you think) all taxi driver jobs and Uber jobs will go away - taken over by automated, self-driving cars (and trucks and buses too, I’m sure).

We need to do things that computers can’t do. Memorizing is something computers do very well - we’ll never compete against them. I agree you need a certain level of memory and memorization - but I would tend to think that creativity, and self-guided discovery might be more valuable in the future.

It reminds me of the Chinese system - and how they are moving away from rote memorization and towards a more “western” system - because the Chinese are not being competitive in terms of creative aspects of development.

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True. Accounting will be automated. Actuaries won’t because they need to interpret data and give recommendations. Anything that can be memorized or automated will be in the future. Personally, I rather see automated doctors replace traditional doctors, or at least reduce their role. I think we’ll see more accurate diagnoses. I don’t think robots will replace philosophers, physicists, or mathematicians. We’ll need people to repair and program robots. Anything abstract will have a better chance against automation. They’ve been talking about computers solving math problems, but that doesn’t bode well with many mathematicians. We’ll still need intuition and mathematicians coming up with new theories as well as checking the work of robots/computer programs. I look forward to a day where I can have an android as a girlfriend.

Ahahaha funny stuff

Information is not a guarantee for knowledge in the wider sense of the word. Its proven that in some cases the more information that is absorbed the more a person becomes selective of certain types of information .

Even though what is being absorbed may not be inacurate , the person becomes biased because of their selection patterns , I.e through deselection of other kinds of infomation

According to this article, robots might replace scientists. In the case of a completely automated society, redistribution of wealth and resources is a must. Who will own the machines? The truly wealthy.

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Kids grow up with computers these days. They’re surrounded by technology, and they learn to get into things that maybe they shouldn’t. Kids today are exposed to so much sex and violence - way more than when I was little. I don’t think there is anything wrong with making learning more appealing, as long as the learning is deep and not on the surface only. We want learning to be fun, if we can make it that way, but there is still a certain amount of drudgery that goes with learning. One time I read that a fifteen year old boy in Shakespeare’s time had as much knowledge of the classics as a graduate student in humanities at Harvard has today. Talk about drudgery.

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It can be discussed from many sides. Like, the fact is that knowledge is now more available to everyone but the question is also - what knowledge? Or, about what?

A concept of representation is what we all should think about, and that means, just being aware that what we know and what we see is what is presented to us, so there is always a question: who is represented by whom and
how is something represented?
No information should be taken for granted.

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That’s why we won’t ever have another Shakespeare. :crying_cat_face:

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We have Stephen king though…we won’t have another Stephen king. I just took it a step further.

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