Smarter, dumber, and the bits of grey in between

What if the internet neither makes us smarter or dumber but it is our interaction with it, that gives it meaning. It is only a tool after all.

Lets use the car as an analogy.

We could easily make the argument that having cars make people lazy:  it enables us to not use our bodies in the way that millions of years of evolution have given us. People are know to drive a few blocks, distances so short that driving may actually be less inefficient than walking. The problem is especially evident in car-loving North American towns and cities where mass transit or bicycling is almost non-existent compared to similar-sized European equivalents. Our love affair with driving only exasperates the obesity health problem that plagues our society.

Not only do some of us use cars when we needn't, but worse are people who are just bad at it: the stereotypical 'bad drivers' that plague our roads. Now we don't put the blame on bad cars, but understand that intrinsically some people have not developed the skills to aid them in operating a vehicle at speed amongst other drivers. In Canadian society we're aware that youth are not developed physically and cognitively enough to make mature decisions about their operation of a vehicle, and we limit their experiences to drive until they're 16 years old.

So are cars good or bad? Remember, they - like the internet - are a tool. The development of the automobile: the shift from steam power to internal combustion engines, the creation of a personal method of transportation was fired by the minds of generations of engineers and craftspeople who tinkered, thought critically, modified their technology to its physical limitations and then created new iterations. It has taken an unbelievable amount of SMART people for some people to be able to drive two blocks the wrong way down a one-way.

As with all technology, their is a certain amount of the population that take it for granted and do not take the time to 'get under the hood' and understand exactly what it is they are using. That does not mean the internet has made them dumb - it simply means they've chosen to pick up the keys before considering the distance their going.

For our youth, we should recognize that their are levels of their own cognitive development that is needed to form before they are able to use the internet in what would look like a responsible manner. The internet is the entirety of human knowledge at one time, and that can be daunting. As Prof. Nantais mentioned during our discussion yesterday, the internet has given everyone a voice and broken down the traditional filters of disseminating information. The responsibility is now on you to decide whether or not my (or anyone's) voice is worth sharing with others.

A map of internet traffic produced by the Opte Project. Licensed under Creative Commons.

[I got off writing on a tangent earlier - it no longer fits with this blog - but I felt I should share rather than delete:]

Now I'm not saying that the internet is a car - but rather a method of transportation. We crawl, walk and then run. We pedal, with training wheels, before attempting any sweet jumps. We observe others transporting us in motorized vehicles before trying to pilot it ourselves. Clearly some of us will be more adept than others, for various reasons, but the important factors are that the rules have been in place for sometime and there is a method of development in place. 

Interestingly, some internet sites have attempted to limit or control the impact of immature 'drivers'. Notably the social sharing website 'reddit' utilizes a robust voting system that is policed by a team of moderators. Clear rules for posting content are in place and users often regulate one another via the up-down vote system to re-inforce social conventions like grammar, spelling and even the location of some votes into 'sub-reddits'.