An answer in true internet fashion .... A quote Stanisław Lem A Link Garbage in, garbage out A Pic Facts Conclusion Humans are basically stupid and the internet can't fix that ! This message was brought to you by the propaganda bureau of R29k. In humans we don't trust.
There are exceptions. At Uni you need to consume the filtered stuff, means you become dependant on the Uni itself, its reputation, on your prof. and dependant on how he judges / reasons things....if the relasionship isn't good you'll get problems. Being autodidact can have advantages if you know how to consume ' the right knowledge' on your own...guidance is for the masses when one has the basics already one doesn't need it anymore...being tested means you are adjusted. It can become a barrier when one claims for a paper (as evidence for available knowledge) or can pretend what is not really existing. The internet wouldn't care about. Actually there is no study without internet anymore... I have got my IT / PC knowledge as an autodidact, I am not sure if one who has studied it is 'smarter'.... No it came to your post. I have been waited for it. All those terms and their determination....also 'the' internet..are there a kind of personal definitions... You are right, it has nothing to do with 'the' internet, it is about the online reading process = how we access the info. Besides of that, the article is far away from being scientific. I had been involved in Alzheimer's disease research..our workgroup had synthetized some substances which had the ability to suppress the progress of it..... I had my own synthesized substance in a clinical trial..... The interesting thing is how to determine cognitive changes, how to assign a value to it, how to measure it.....and at another aspect when I am in a job interview: How do I find out who is the right one for us to become recruited? We have to think about how we form the time when the one is here to get most of info. Credentials are not all....also pre-defined tests , IQ tests... Actually to be smart is nothing but to use predefined ideals. Time doesn't play a role we are not talking of intelligence. One who has got millions of clicks at YouTube for instance is a kind of smart already, but can be as dumb as bread. To be smart also means to recognize the huge potential of the internet as a platform for new jobs...
Yen, you shot your own foot in that post: what you really get at the Uni is the principles, so those can later guide you in life, helping you to filter stuff around you. Uni is NOT a big cr@ppy place in terms of indoctrination only, even though it can occur. Firstly, because we do have a capacity to question and we never simply take over what is given to us uncritically. So, actually, if you do get in conflict with a (bad, self-loving) professor (whose book one must buy to pass his exam), this might be a good thing, if you have the capacity to not only understand stuff critically but also the spine to say it. You may be wrong lots of times but in that conflict you may well learn lots and lots. From how to debate to having to research to bolster your own position onwards... Given some serious analyses of Uni as the last feudal organisation on Modern Earth D ), where professors have oodles of power that some of them abuse and therefore do not deserve the position, it's actually a must - warring with some of those authoritarian b@stards, who stopped developing since they got a place as a professor... This indeed is not "trouble" (alone) but also a character builder and a help towards building one's own position. Let us not forget that Modern world has many possibilities (consequence of freedom as its basic principle, unlike Feudalism or Slavery) and there is always a way for such a student to swim to the surface eventually... Science as we know it has that as both the presumption (conditio sine qua non) and the consequence of its being and "doing". As for "smart" v. "knowledge". Knowledge today is a frequently misused term, mistaken for retaining information, which is complete nonsense. That is simple memory, as opposed to knowledge of principles or as the Ancients understood it, as knowledge of differences (and sameness, by default). "Smart" in today's world is used in a "common sense" kind of manner, as in "getting to cheese in a given set of circumstances", i.e. a 'functionalist' approach. "Sophia" (wisdom), in a Mediterranean-Western-European tradition/civilisation, changed meaning over many centuries. To fully understand it one needs to know its origins, the Ancient Greek world a wee bit. There, generally speaking, one should have a complete development as a Human Being (although they wouldn't say that but as a [free] Greek [as opposed to a woman or Barbarian ]), i.e. developed several sides to one's general capacity to Reason and apply Reason ("Nous") in specific circumstances (a capacity they call "phronesis") etc. etc. They have not reduced such a capacity to "making money" or "getting by" or "acquiring power/influence" etc. There, I hope this brings in more confusion to internet...
Define smart ? Also you should note that since the info I presented is old, the pron viewers must be about 1000 time more! What I find incredibly stupid is that most of this stuff is archived, for what purpose I have no idea ! What a massive waste or resources. I also think that social networking is serving to reduce the iq of the human race.
A prominent German philosopher once stated that he doesn't read a book unless at least 2000 years old. What do you think, is he on the internet?
It depends on how much one is identified with what one knows. And it depends on how many of such individuals are found in a particular Uni. Some think: “I am my knowledge and since it has taken a lot of time and many efforts to have got it, it is something with a high value and to question it means to question (attack) myself.” But do I know knowledge is relative and do I know there are other ways to teach, other interpretations, other opinions? In short can I put my ego aside, my 'rank', from where I come (which Uni or which Fachhochschule)? Can I accept that there is somebody who knows it 'better'? To be preeminent in a particular field one doesn't shine with contents / origin / papers. One shines with the way (s)he lives it, with enthusiasm, with excitement. Such people make the listeners addictive and are living the subject itself. They are including not excluding. There are students who like strict guidance and strict teaching. Those later take benefit from their perfect memory, from their stored complex matters, from their discursive thinking, they apply what they have learned mechanically. And there are students who need their freedom, they deduce from their principles, they have access to intuition so there can be new ideas all the time. There is one relation some don't like to understand both ways. The more is determined the less is possible. Means if one is very intolerable and self-convinced and relies on own thinking alone, one dispossesses oneself of the possibilities / opportunities of another view. And concerning terms and definitions....as you have mentioned their meaning has changed during history. To have such an article more scientific one firstly needs to define the used terms and also to refer to the cognitive tests and statistics which are used to get results. Absolute conclusions (black / white) are unscientific. All the differences should be compared and discussed separately. A determined change does not mean that something has become negative. For instance when there is a significant decrement of IQ, it means there is a (negative) change, but what's about the IQ test itself? Is it still able to give a valid result of the 'current idea of intelligence'? It only means that it doesn't fit as well as it did to a past idea of intelligence.
I believe the path to being smart or stupid lays within a person, and not outside them. If you are curious, if you have questions and seek answers, you are free in your choice of external sources to find the answers. Those may be books, movies, people, nature, Internet, whatever. As a source of information, Internet presents a complicated structure full of various ideas and contradicting opinions, whilst the book or a newspaper usually hold to one line of thought. Internet is full of voices crying out ideas chaotically, many of those ideas are stupid indeed but it doesn't mean that among them the sound ideas are missing. So if you have some predisposition to be smart, you will certainly not grab the first opinion you read on the internet, you will start researching and analyzing and will eventually become smarter. If you do the opposite - you will become more stupid. So the mankind and Internet have the same relation as a monkey and matches.
It all depends on the way people use it. If someone just uses this platform to check out funny videos, images or for connecting with friends then he is probably not learning much. But we can not just deny the fact that one can find updated information on a diverse range of topics here.