Is the internet making us smarter or dumber?

bungler

Was in the pub last night and a discussion started about the internet and one of the lads said its all making us thick as planks cause we sit on it for hours looking at crap. So 3 guys agree'd with him and said it is making us dumber.

But

4 of the otehr lads said that since the net has been around they feel it has made them more intelligent and the likes of wikipedia etc is very good for finding out things and learning about new things.

You have to admit been on facebook or just at other stuff ( ahem) obviously is not much use of the brain but on the otehrhand look at home many people come to boards.ie if tehy wish to find something out?

Gonna run a poll to see what you all think.

PeakOutput

both

the smart can get smarter and the dumb get dumber

Sisko

Neither.

It has however made us vastly more knowledgeable and socially retarded.

In AH, it's usually never a good idea to put in a silly option - whether it be "meh" or "atari jaguar", the majority of people will always vote for it.

RockinRolla

Politicians are trying to censor what you can see on the internet, when you can see it and what you wish to download.

We must stand up against censorship - television is already a lost cause.
If they succeed, then the internet will factually, be making us "dumber".

Zebra3

Is the internet making us smarter or dumber?

You do know what dumb means, yeah?

Aidric

It's sure fúcked up the average attention span.

bungler

Deleted User wrote: »

In AH, it's usually never a good idea to put in a silly option - whether it be "meh" or "atari jaguar", the majority of people will always vote for it.

The only reason i did it was the last poll i ran on the rubberbandits, a load of people wanted the meh option so shag it i cant win

Fago!

I am so smart, I am so smart..... smrt.... I mean smArt!

xoxyx

Well we can all talk for hours and sound knowledgeable about things that we don't have the first clue about. Weather / politics / quantum mechanics? Sure we're all armchair experts.

What I do know is it's wreaking havoc on kids' spelling. Lulz!

bungler

Zebra3 wrote: »

You do know what dumb means, yeah?

Yes
lacking intelligence or good judgment; stupid; dull-witted.


Can also mean

2.lacking the power of speech (often offensive when applied to humans): a dumb animal.
3. temporarily unable to speak: dumb with astonishment.

4. refraining from any or much speech; silent.

5. made, done, etc., without speech.

6. lacking some usual property, characteristic, etc.

7. performed in pantomime; mimed.

8. Computers . pertaining to the inability to do processing locally: A dumb terminal can input, output, and display data, but cannot process it. Compare intelligent ( def. 4 )

But we all get the jist of the question so we know im not asking can we all speak

Carl Sagan

Depends on what being smart is. I'm much more knowledgeable because of the internet, but I can't really apply a lot of that knowledge to anything.

Micky Dolenz

I don't understand the question.

Irish Guitarist

It's destroyed peoples spelling. The amount of people that think 'alot' is a word is incredible. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened if kids had learned their spelling from books instead of internet forums.

scientific1982

Neither. But everyone should take a step back every once and a while and appreciate just how ****ing amazing the internet is.

Dionysus

More knowledgeable on a wider range of things; yes, if you use it wisely. Smarter, definitely not if you're too lazy to do anything else other than hang around discussion fora talking shíte.

If you're using discussion fora to acquire expertise knowledge, or even to occasionally give it, then you're being smart in your use of the internet. Like everything else, how smart you are in your use of the internet comes down to how self-disciplined you're willing to be.

Hank_Jones

bungler wrote: »

Yes
lacking intelligence or good judgment; stupid; dull-witted.


Can also mean

2.lacking the power of speech (often offensive when applied to humans): a dumb animal.
3. temporarily unable to speak: dumb with astonishment.

4. refraining from any or much speech; silent.

5. made, done, etc., without speech.

6. lacking some usual property, characteristic, etc.

7. performed in pantomime; mimed.

8. Computers . pertaining to the inability to do processing locally: A dumb terminal can input, output, and display data, but cannot process it. Compare intelligent ( def. 4 )

But we all get the jist of the question so we know im not asking can we all speak

Should there be a 1. in there somewhere?

Seems a bit weird to start at 2.

Dionysus

Aidric wrote: »

It's sure fúcked up the average attention span.

This, x infinity squared.

bungler

Hank_Jones wrote: »

Should there be a 1. in there somewhere?

Seems a bit weird to start at 2.

1.

There ya go

Sorry i left it out of the very first part. Point proven the tinternet has made me dumb

Dionysus

xoxyx wrote: »

What I do know is it's wreaking havoc on kids' spelling. Lulz!

And this, and that includes the big kids on Boards.ie who refuse to see the red lines under the words they type, otherwise known as the very useful in-built spellchecker.

You're = you are.
Your = possessive case; your coat etc.

charlemont

Makes us **** more.........

kerryman12

dont think it has made any real differance, its just a tool. And like any tool its how people choose to use it.

bobbytables

I had a mate that couldn't see any potential in anything unless someone hand held him and spelled out the benefits of engaging right now in front of him. About 10 years ago he considered forwarding stupid chain letters and pre-LOLcat imagery via email the sum of all uses.

In the last 10 years he has advanced on to Facebook.

The Internet is a resource available to all of us here. It can be used for many purposes. Saying the Internet is making people stupid is like saying all Film is a waste of time when all you watch is mindless rubbish.

Some people just don't want to see it beyond that, which is a completely different matter.

Meh, my 2c

Dionysus

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

It's destroyed peoples spelling. The amount of people that think 'alot' is a word is incredible. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened if kids had learned their spelling from books instead of internet forums.

And there's absolutely no excuse for it on this website. I've typed in "alot" here and a red line appears under it to tell me it's incorrect.

PS: It's always a 'number' of people; 'amount' of produce etc

Fago!

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

I don't understand the question.

There's yer answer OP

KylieWyley

The internet has had a detrimental effect on the average person's IQ / attention span / grammar / spelling / social interaction with others . . . ?

Pfft, next they'll be telling us frontal lobotomies make us dumber :rolleyes:

Latchy

Aidric wrote: »

It's sure fúcked up the average attention span.

Sisko wrote: »

Neither.

It has however made us vastly more knowledgeable and socially retarded.

^ These .

I would be the first to admit I have not paid as much attention to what somebody might have being saying to me while I've being typing away ... staring at a machine ffs . The internet has in some way devauled face to face human interaction and interesting conversation .

As for making us smarter or dumber ? I would say we are more informed than ever in human history but I find reading a book far more interesting , easy to absorb and relaxing than reading long text off the screen .

Sending / recieving texts ,overdosing on our digi /phone cameras and adding to our already overcrowded friends list on facebook ,twitter ,skype etc , we in the main are far to over- reliant on technology .

cleremy jarkson

I think the instant gratification it provides facilitates the growth of depression, which causes people not be as mentally sharp as they once were...but that's for the depression thread..

Common as...

Dionysus wrote: »

And there's absolutely no excuse for it on this website. I've typed in "alot" here and a red line appears under it to tell me it's incorrect

Eh? I ain't got that much needed red line

bobbytables

I agree that the way we interact with the Internet can and is having negative effects on society.

E.g. When we look at web pages, we don't read, we scan. Our eyes don't jump around like that when we read books. I am a software developer so I spend a lot of time in front of code, and the scan method applies here also.

So when I try to read a book, I often get frustrated at the pace by which I can interpret what I'm reading. I want to hop about the place. I think this is a terrible thing, because I still read books, but have noticed the change in my patience for the process of reading every word in every line in even a few pages of a book has declined significantly.

IMO this is not the Internet's fault but rather the evolution of how we interact with it and related technology.

bobbytables

Common as... wrote: »

Eh? I ain't got that much needed red line

its a browser feature. Its not boards.ie that's doing it, it depends what browser and/or features you have enabled.

af_thefragile

You've got to be selective at where you're spending your time on the internet. I have learnt an immense loads about different things which I wouldn't have had if I didn't have internet.

Many of these things are brilliant and have made my life better. But there are also many I wish I could unsee/unlearn!!

Though one thing is I used to read a lot of books before I had internet. Now I barely read books. Not a good thing. Need to stop spending so much time on the internet and start reading more books!!

xoxyx

xoxyx wrote: »

What I do know is it's wreaking havoc on kids' spelling. Lulz!

I asked an English teacher in my German course about it, he said there hadn't been any noticeable difference and a lot of the "omg it makes their spelling worse" was hype. "They speak differently to each other than they do to me, and their spelling is the same"

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

It's destroyed peoples spelling. The amount of people that think 'alot' is a word is incredible. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened if kids had learned their spelling from books instead of internet forums.

I remember arguing about it about 14 years ago with classmates I don't know if the internet is to blame


Anyway I can say that my attention span has decreased, that's for sure

blindpilot

Neither. its made me less bored and more horny though. Or hornier. Whatever. What?

ArtSmart

dumberer. no wait, smarterer

red menace

bungler wrote: »

Was in the pub last night and a discussion started about the internet and one of the lads said its all making us thick as planks cause we sit on it for hours looking at crap. So 3 guys agree'd with him and said it is making us dumber.

But

4 of the otehr lads said that since the net has been around they feel it has made them more intelligent and the likes of wikipedia etc is very good for finding out things and learning about new things.

You have to admit been on facebook or just at other stuff ( ahem) obviously is not much use of the brain but on the otehrhand look at home many people come to boards.ie if tehy wish to find something out?

Gonna run a poll to see what you all think.

Highlighted the key word there.
It makes us feel smarter because we have access to all this data and information, that doesn't mean we are smarter with it.
It's only good if we use all this information to improve us and form opinions about stuff
Social networking definitely dumbs us down, I know I am guilty of sitting there like a Lab rat pressing a button to get a food pellet hitting refresh to see if some one validates me by "Liking" my stuff
Trying to cut back on the amount of time I spend on Facebook and using
my time online to research stuff I am interested in

Tar.Aldarion

It increases the ease at which you can increase your knowledge. How everybody uses that will differ.

Dublinvillian

Just Google it

El Horseboxo

I reckon it's made me a great aquisition for quizes. I rarely use the internet for loooking up shíte. I love clicking random page on wikipedia and reading about stuff i never knew existed or hardly knew anything about. And the amount of free documentary sites out there is brilliant. I've also pretty much learned myself Portuguese from the internet. Granted i had an advantage in knowing spanish first as both are similar.

Stokolan

Its making me lazy!

bungler

El Horseboxo wrote: »

I reckon it's made me a great aquisition for quizes. I rarely use the internet for loooking up shíte. I love clicking random page on wikipedia and reading about stuff i never knew existed or hardly knew anything about. And the amount of free documentary sites out there is brilliant. I've also pretty much learned myself Portuguese from the internet. Granted i had an advantage in knowing spanish first as both are similar.

Id have to agree about wikipedia i spend hours reading about things and click onto a new page. i know know an awful lot about ****e ill only use in table quizzes

Jake Rugby Walrus666

Aidric wrote: »

It's sure fúcked up the average attention span.

tl:dr

Dionysus

Common as... wrote: »

Eh? I ain't got that much needed red line

bobbytables wrote: »

its a browser feature. Its not boards.ie that's doing it, it depends what browser and/or features you have enabled.

I never realised that the in-built spellchecker was a browser rather than a Boards.ie function. I've been using Google Chrome for a while now and misspelled words written in a Boards.ie post are always underlined in red. I checked to see if the same function works in Internet Explorer, and it doesn't. In Mozilla Firefox, every word is underlined in red and is offering me Irish alternatives - in other words, Firefox has an Irish language spellchecker built into it. I changed the language to English and sure enough it also has an in-built English language spellchecker when I post on Boards. In my Apple Safari browser, a spellchecker is also in-built when I post here.

So, out of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Explorer, only Internet Explorer does not have an in-built spellchecker when you post on Boards.ie.

You can download Google Chrome here; Mozilla Firefox here; Apple Safari here. Both Chrome and Firefox allow you to use the url bar as your search engine, but I left Firefox for Chrome as it was too slow. I don't know if they've changed that since.

Chaz

Smarter in general terms but lazier I think.

coffeelover

Definatly dummer Since I joined facebook my grades have definatly gone down :rolleyes:

Nozebleed

more opinionated..

Fighting Irish

PeakOutput wrote: »

the smart can get smarter and the dumb get dumber

perfect!

Dionysus

coffeelover wrote: »

Definatly dummer Since I joined facebook my grades have definatly gone down :rolleyes:

You can improve your English spelling grades by changing your browser to Google Chrome, which has an in-built spellchecker for every post you make on Boards.

bungler

I remember a few years ago my mate who hates technoligy but wanted a computer for teh house and kids asked me to give him a hand buying one. I brought him to PC World to have a look and he walked and straight over to the guy working there. They guy said "can i help you" and my mate said " Yea, i wana buy the internet" the poor guy working there nearly fell on the floor with laughter and so did i.

Maybe now that he has the PC he can google "difference between a computer and the internet"

Stinicker

I think the internet is a great and powerful tool however it is greatly abused and for people to reference Wikipedia and take that as the truth then they are greatly mistaken.

Wikipedia is such a liberal soapbox it is unbeleiveable, look up any rightwing politician and all his controversies and bad points will be glaringly obvious in the article, look up and leftwing liberal and it will be overflowing with PC leftwing praise for him/her.

Communistapedia more like.

Guill

So 3 guys agree'd with him and said it is making us dumber.

Ever since the internet i have slowly began to forget how to speak.