Is the internet making us smarter or dumber?

af_thefragile · 08-01-2011 04:41PM

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!!

08-01-2011 04:45PM

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 · 08-01-2011 04:46PM

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

ArtSmart · 08-01-2011 04:46PM

dumberer. no wait, smarterer

red menace · 08-01-2011 04:58PM

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 · 08-01-2011 05:05PM

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

Dublinvillian · 08-01-2011 05:06PM

Just Google it

El Horseboxo · 08-01-2011 05:12PM

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 · 08-01-2011 05:14PM

Its making me lazy!

bungler · 08-01-2011 05:14PM

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 · 08-01-2011 05:18PM

Aidric wrote: »

It's sure fúcked up the average attention span.

tl:dr

Dionysus · 08-01-2011 05:45PM

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 · 08-01-2011 05:46PM

Smarter in general terms but lazier I think.

coffeelover · 08-01-2011 05:50PM

Definatly dummer

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

Nozebleed · 08-01-2011 05:54PM

more opinionated..

Fighting Irish · 08-01-2011 05:58PM

PeakOutput wrote: »

the smart can get smarter and the dumb get dumber

perfect!

Dionysus · 08-01-2011 06:02PM

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 · 08-01-2011 11:59PM

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 · 09-01-2011 12:09AM

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 · 09-01-2011 12:12AM

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.

Firetrap · 09-01-2011 12:33AM

I don't think it has made us dumber but has changed the way we access information and can fill our brains with all sorts of useless information :eek:

foxinsox · 09-01-2011 12:41AM

scientific1982 wrote: »

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

I totally agree with you there...

and I also think that everyone should step back every once in a while and read a book.. a decent one..:)

Just thinking about this I think the internet is fantastic but I'd be interested to see statistics of spelling, grammar, knowledge retention as compared to before the internet, as regards education.

EG:

When I was in school a long long time ago, if we were given a "project" to do: off we headed to the library to sit in the section where the encylopedias were kept, we read about the subject and write a summary. If we had a picture it was usually an old magazine or newspaper cut out. Only the real rich had their own encylopedias at home :rolleyes:

Now most kids have their own PC and printer, project done in ten minutes, copy and paste and project worthy of a newspaper, done..

Giselle · 09-01-2011 01:02AM

It might not make people dumber, but if the legend is true then the prevelance of porn must be responsible for an epidemic of deafness.:)

I think its aided me in gaining more general knowlege that tends to have limited usefulness. Its also made looking up things related to both my work and my studies incredibly easy.

Its indispensible to the point that whether or not its good or bad for my intelligence is irrelevant because I can't do without it.

Cheap Thrills! · 09-01-2011 01:12AM

Dumbererer

yeh :pac:

Is the internet making us smarter or dumber?

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