In the past year, a study was done about whether or not internet makes us smarter. It was a test for experts and internet pioneers who have been using the internet before 1993. It was a web based test that took the opinions of 900 surveyors that gave their perspective on how the internet is affecting human intelligence. 371 out of the 900 surveyors were experts who have some credibility when it comes to the Internet. The experts were chosen in two ways, one was whether or not the expert had ventured predictions about the future impact of the internet in the 1990-1995. The other way was they were handpicked due to their positions as stakeholders in the development of the internet. This study was administered by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon Universaty and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Impact of Internet
One of the topics of the study was on the impact of Internet on reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge. As the study shows “ three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the internet has improved reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. According to the study, 65% of the amount of people who took the survey believed that by 2020 it will be clear that whether or not Internet has really improved our skills to read, write, and render knowledge, while only 32% disagreed with that statement.
Is Google Making us Stupid?
The study also was focused on whether or not Google is making us stupid. About 76% of them disagreed with that statement that Google is making people stupid. In 2008, Nicholas Carr, who also took the survey, wrote a cover story that had the line “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, which sparked this part of the study. He argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting his capacity to concentrate. Whereas majority of the other testers believed that as people are are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices. One person also challenged Carr, states that while the media can challenge humans' capacity to concentrate there were signs that we are developing “fluid intelligence- the ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge.” Jamais Cascio.
Prediction of Future Technology
The last topic that was gone over in the study was whether or not future technology can be anticipated in the present, and whether it will take innovators by surprise or not. 80% of the testers believe that by 2020, the technology will often come “out of the blue” and won't be anticipated by innovators, while 17% believe the opposite. Such as one of the experts said “ Our ability to predict hot gadgets has shown to be poor, and this isn't likely to change.” Wojciech Dec, Edge Engineering Group. While another argued that “Ten years isn't very long, even in internet years.” and that “looking at todays popular technologies, I don't see many that weren't already thoroughly conceived of ten years ago.” Bill Woodcock,research director.
The survey, in general pondered on the question of whether or not internet makes you smart.
News: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/19/the-internet-makes-you-smarter/
Survey :http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-the-Internet-IV.aspx
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ReplyDeleteShawn,
ReplyDeleteOverall, the content of your blog post is well written. But there are a few things that I would recommend that I believe will make this post stronger and more effective.
One of the first things that I noticed while reading this post was the repetitiveness of the word it. Instead of using that word, try explaining what it actually is. Although the word it is only used a couple of times in the first paragraph, I believe that by starting a sentence with the word it is ineffective and causes the readers to sometimes forget the subject that is being discussed. My point here is maybe try not to begin any sentences with that word and your introduction will be even stronger because the introduction is one of the most important parts for articles like this.
The second recommendation that I may offer is the consistency of the use of quotes. For almost every quote in your post, it is in the middle of a sentence and the first word in the quotes are either capitalized or not capitalized. For example, in the Impact of Internet section, the quote used is, “three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of...”
And in the Prediction of the Future Technology the quote, “Ten years isn't very long, even in internet years.”
As you can see, the first quote I picked out has a lower case and the second quote is uppercase. All I suggest is being consistent when using quotes in your post.
The final thing I would like to point out is that there is no section that has results of the survey. I read the original article and noticed that there was not a final study that showed if internet made people smarter not. May I suggest doing a little bit of research to see if you can find results of this survey. If you can, I think that to have the results of the survey studied would make this post even more effective than it is now.
Other than that, the layout of your blog is clean and easy to read, the subtitles are helpful and understanding, and the picture goes along great with this post. Great job!
I liked reading your blog post, it was written well and I thought it was organized pretty well with the headers before the paragraphs. I was a little confused on the point of the whole article though, does the internet really make us more stupid? There isn't really a clear answer in your article, mostly ratios on what experts believe. I'm curious as to why they wont have an answer until the year 2020. Maybe you can research a little bit and it would strengthen your article. I liked how your blog didn't seem to have much bias in it. It made your blog seem more professional and real.
ReplyDelete