Clay Shirky: Does the Internet Make You Smarter? | Hacker News Reader

Clay Shirky: Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

online.wsj.com

40 pointsckuehne10 comments

It certainly makes people read and write more. When I was a teen (and the Internet wasn't mainstream), most of my friends didn't write or type a single word that wasn't for school purposes. I think that was pretty typical.

Now? The average 13 year old seems to give the average Gen Y'er a run for their money on the keyboard skills, and they're pumping out all sorts of text. There's been an explosion in written communications between semi-literate types that would have been alien to us back in the early 90s.

The article doesn't really address the question posed in the sexy title, as you begin to do. The kind of proliferation of writing that worried Luther and then Poe and now the "pessimists" mentioned here presents readers with the intellectual challenge of figuring out what's really authoritative or just good versus what's throwaway. Poe apparently thought that was an evil, but maybe meeting that challenge does make people smarter, even if the sci journal vs. erotic fiction opposition makes it seem easy (I don't want to throw away the M. de Sade!). "How is the internet changing the way you think?" is an Edge question. http://edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html

presents readers with the intellectual challenge of figuring out what's really authoritative or just good versus what's throwaway

Call me a pessimistic optimist. I think the proliferation of even throwaway writing is a good thing but I judiciously use the domain name of a page to determine whether it's throwaway or not ;-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1406664

I think he's making arguments that the Internet is making us more knowledgeable (which is obvious) rather than smarter. Nick Carr's argument was more that persistent multitasking is damaging our ability to think.

It's possible that technology will make us both dumber and more knowledgeable.

Again... similar tactic as of the "is silicon valley dead" post. attention! attention... thats all they want... for the fsckng CTR

Suggest HN: Ignore any query strings on the end of URLs when working out what links are unique on HN. This would cut down on dupes containing tracking portions like this.

Many sites’ articles’ addresses are only unique in the query string. For example, HN’s own discussion pages would all be considered http://news.ycombinator.com/item.

Why not something that pops up when you submit that says "Looks like your post could be a copy of these other stories. If yours is different, please check this box." And if you don't check the box, and your story is a copy, the system kills the link and hands all the karma to the original story.

i think it makes you dumberer

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