In The Independent today, Andrew Keen writes of the dumbing down of the Internet generation.

With the discussion of the signpost editor, it struck a chord with a couple of pertinent points:

* the Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein demonstrates how the internet is making young people increasingly ignorant about almost everything except online video games and the narcissism of self-authored internet content.

* the Boston Globe columnist Maggie Jackson suggests that the increasingly low attention span and poor cognitive skills of today's multi - tasking, digitally addicted kids threatens to return civilisation to another dark age, one of what she calls "shadows and fears".

To me, in the Wikipedia context, there is a further concern: the Wikipedia world creates an environment that people believe their work is important and therefore they get a sense of achievement and fulfilment, reinforced by the responses of other members and of course, those at the very top of the Wikipedia tree who heap praise on the younglings who fritter their time away believing that they are doing great works. The reality is that an individuals contribution is minuscule, and with the lack of any rational quality control system, ultimately pointless: yet there are a group of young people being led astray.

Playing devil's advocate. I was helping daughter with homework on chemical reaction in rockets, something neither of us knew about. The following Wikipedia articles were very useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipropellant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopropellant

Monopropellant (I learned) is a single fuel that reacts under certain conditions. E.g. hydrogen peroxide or hydrazine (also water in a steam engine). The article gives the chemical or physical reactions in each case. Bipropellant is when you mix two different substances which give you the desired reaction.

That is a case of the encyclopedia being really helpful, and where standard encyclopedias such as the ones I used in my schooldays being totally useless. I also read around the links provided and it was all very good stuff (Saturn V engines, history of rockets, all that sort of thing). My only criticism is that many of these are quite difficult for young readers (or mathematically challenged ones). E.g. this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine

quite soon gets into mathematics. Fairly simple mathematics, but given 50% of the population doesn't understand percentages, even that will be quite hard.

My other criticism would be that areas of quantitative science and mathematics are generally pretty well done in Wikipedia. On the other hand, the humanities is generally pretty poor, even abysmal in places (such as my own area of expertise in medieval studies, which is mostly copy and paste from very old sources such as Catholic encyclopedia or Britannica 1911).

I do have a bugbear about school children writing essays on PC's, which means they can simply copy and paste material from Wikipedia into their essay, without going through the brain. This is why I insist my own children write everything longhand - gives reasonable though not complete assurance that they have read and *understood* everything before going into the homework. I also have regular running battles with the school about their assumption that pupils have access to a PC. (My son is at a traditional school where they do insist on handwritten work, however daughter's school not so good about this).

If the work of teenagers on Wikipedia was spent working together in a constructive fashion building these articles, then I think we would be saying that Wikipedia was a triumph because it was a good, constructive use of the Internet.

However, I have yet to see a conversation here that says "teenagers are model Wikipedians because they do so much to build quality content on Wikipedia" rather all the conversations are about teenagers who spend their time dabbling in mindless activities, pointless(ish) teen culture articles, and the damaging WikiPolitics.

It is the WikiPolitics that concerns me as it gives people a distorted view on what being responsible means against a distorted ethical view of the world where all that counts are Wikipedian policies, not a life view of a moral stance. How many people end up being blocked and banned by teenage Wikipedians, not because of real world malice, but because they cannot relate how their actions to "improve the encyclopedia" relate to Wikipedia policy that gets them banned?

The fundamental difference between the young and the old is that older people have more experience of a useful trait called pragmatism. Wikipedians often show themselves to be lacking this.

I've read a good bit of Roth but not The Human Stain. I did see the movie, and after seeing Anthony Hopkins playing Coleman Silk it would be hard to see it any other way. The Silk character probably does make the "dumbest generation" remark but I believe it was in the context of "political correctness" not about the "digitally infatuated." This seems an almost Wikipedian type of conflation. But even more to the point is how odd it is to characterize this as the central idea of the novel/movie. It is a very rich work about race, identity, social class, loyalty and relationships. I would have to wonder if Keen didn't merely Google the term "dumbest generation."

Aaagh, yes. I think we have to keep in mind the idea of a 'dumbest generation' is unsafe because of the general tendency of older generations to look down on younger generations (also vice versa): and while there may be cultural specifics of behaviour in time and space, it takes a great leap of conjecture to blame them, in this case, on 'teh internet'. nearly 15 years ago, a young teenager committed suicide because of bullying about her weight, among other things, I understand in this case by a bunch of boys. They didn't use the internet- but the effect was the same. I think Stanley Cohen's work is still apposite here.

I do perceive a general phenomena of 'dumbing down' recently I have to admit- but at the level of producers of and controllers of access to knowledge: Wikipedia has issues in this area- I've said before I think. One of my academic interests is in facilitating ways of critical analysis of all claims made, that can be utilised by both undergraduates, but just as importantly, people not taking university education, of not just taking claims at face value- especially when accompanied by appeals to authority for example.

While it is important- vital- to look at time/space specifics of knowledge and how it is produced/controlled, and the power relations within that context- describing the younger generation are dumb (which this boils down to) is unsound. Plus - on a more anecdotal level of course - I know plenty of dumb specimens of my own generation (thirty-fifty-somethings), and even more of the generation above me!

Yes, as I've pointed out on another thread, Wikipedia doesn't even HAVE a moral stance. And it's not like they couldn't have a minimal one in its 5 pillars, like: Golden Rule, or even "Don't be Evil". The closest they get is the "special sensitivity" clause in BLP, and even that one's written as though it was the product of legal fears (a great basis for ethics indeed ), and some some pretentions that "should" can be derived from "is" ala Ayn Rand (it can't, but Wikipedians are very good at pretending if nothing else).

The idea that being "civil" substitutes for being "moral," reminds me of a great cartoon, where the hangman in the black mask is about to pull the level on the trap for some poor schlub with the rope around his neck, and the executioner says "And have a nice day, sir."

So yes, the place is a wasteland. Thanks, Jimbo. We didn't expect much else from you, but (sure enough) you didn't pleasantly surprise us.

But social engineering is a very real phenomenon. Recall the famous quote from Bertrand Russell:



People who hold these views could not resist the opportunity offered them by the internet.

Well I don't necessarily disagree with any of that at all - but, I think your point about the internet can also be claimed of Television, or indeed print media. My point is that this generation has been moulded more by internet interaction- but previous generations have been by other forms of media, and Russell of course was speaking long before the internet came into being, and was referring to radio, among other media. TV, radio and print media tend to have even more of a tendency to generate passive acceptance of its images, claims etc. among those it addresses, possibly, because there is little room for direct interaction (short of throwing something at the box, something I find myself increasingly wanting to do .).

I'm saying we have to be careful about making claims about the younger or newest generation being 'dumbed down', when our older generations show signs of being discursively constructed as subjects in similar worrying ways also.

Anecdotally (again! sorry) I know of a number of sixty somethings whose whole repertoire of intellectual responses are visibly engineered by what they've read in the Daily Mail that day! And sometimes the Sun. Same goes for 40, 50 and 30 somethings. I've actually seen people reel off certain newspaper phrases from the morning's headlines as their own quite frequently! Astounding when you first see it.

Try comparing a reference book from today to one written 25 years ago. The new one looks better, sounds smarter, and is probably three times as long. The old one is neatly organized, brings the salient points to your attention, and helps you.

No wonder kids today are turning to the internet. They're finding the output of todays book-writers to be pretty useless. It doesn't help that when the kids meet these supposedly great minds in person, all the great minds have to show them are endless powerpoint presentations.

I don't think that makes kids any stupider than past generations who had teachers who knew how to communicate.

The new one will no doubt have lots of pretty pictures and crisp diagrams, many in color.

Yes. Any statements to the effect that we, society, must steer our children towards values more enlightened than those of previous generations amounts to advocacy of social engineering through propaganda. To the degree that this is propagated through the educational system, rather than mass media, its effect is rephrasable as, the difference between what highly educated people believe and what average people believe. For example. its often said that the more educated someone is, the more likely he or she is to hold what are nowadays referred to as liberal social attitudes. If true, this amounts to an admission that these attitudes are not natural discoveries, but must be inculcated through a program of indoctrination. Anyone who controls this system will have a strong incentive to push as many people through it as they can.

That is actually why I write for Wikipedia. Making difficult things simple is challenging, and it helps people. Not to be confused with 'dumbing down'.

Actually, read Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy', which I rediscovered recently. Elegantly and wittily written, and contains more than a grain of truth in many parts.

And is authoritative, too, especially as regards, um, Leibnitz .

If you like Russell you might also like the less authoritative, but still fairly accurate and even better-told The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. Still also in print after 55 years, which is nearly as long as Russell.

Well, yes, but man without any education at all is not much more than an animal. Homo sapiens sapiens, is a software species. The brain is just a platform for running another program, and that program is modern man, not the brain per se (though you need a brain that big to run that large a program). We're not quite tabula rasa, close enough. We have so few specific hardwired behaviors that you might as well consider that the 3 lbs of meat behind your eyes as serving you now as a platform for a more or less virtual machine, which is your culture. You don't GET the choice of whether or not to propagandize kids. Unless you want wolf-boy and wolf-girl, your only choice is which species of propaganda you pick. A step up from totally feral children are tribal primitives who see witchcraft in every action and happening, and spend their time looking out for food, witches, and whatever benefits their own immediate family. But that's already after heavy socialization.

I'm not quite sure quite what "liberal social attitudes" are being picked out for belittlement, but from what I can see, humans are a bit like cats. If you miss the month-long window of exposing kittens to humans or ducks or dogs or whatever, you get adult cats that probably never will be outgoing, friendly, or in any sense, very "tame." They hide. They are suspicious. They bite. Without training and "exposure therapy" cats grow up paranoid, "racist" and fairly reactionary. You can actually make Conservative Republican cats that way: you merely isolate kittens from anything other than cats, until they're nearly grown.

...and taking that line leads you into the perilous water where we hold the purity of children above the wisdom of adults (I'm thinking Wikipedian distorted thinking here) and the presumption that the influence of the older generation over the younger generation is malign.



Also interesting to me is the implication of your post that liberal attitudes must be indoctrination must be a bad thing. I think it is far simpler: without education, the natural tendency is to consider self or one's immediate community; with education, it is possible to more understand the wider network of dependencies in society. It doesn't mean that these problems become easier to solve - indeed that is the attraction of right wing philosophy - you can simply dump lots of the problems to one side as you don't take responsibility for solving them and claim that there are simple solutions to simple problems.

For example, starving on the street is not society's problem, simply get out on your bike and earn a living was classic Thatcherism.

No doubt Russell's many admirers will be pleased to see your enthusiastic endorsement of his work.

Just have schools force students to read newspapers.

Wot- the Sun?