by cmoon » Sun May 04, 2008 11:48 am
Careful Potato. Kevin is raising some real points. Let's not derail this so quickly.
My earlier comment was definitely not a joke. You would think having rapid access to information would mean greater intelligence just as having rapid access to music would mean greater music appreciation, but I'm not convinced.
Rapid access to information has translated to cut-and-paste, not genuine learning. Any real attempt to communicate (like this post) is genuinely drowned out by sound-bites.
For instance, of particular interest to me as a science educator is the so-called controversy between evolutionary theory and creationism/intelligent design. There not only is no controversy, but virtually all of the issues raised by the intelligent design folks have been concisely answered--but not in a way accessible to laymen or subject to 'sound-bite'-ification.
Even worse, the 'controversy' has been polarized into a Christian vs Athiest issue (it isn't) and even a conservative vs liberal issue (it isn't.)
In this one example we can see how something that is worth learning about but is fairly complex and would take a great deal of time to fully understand (yet is supported by as much evidence as newton's laws of motion) has easily been routed into a tenuous, controversial idea using only handful of sound-bites ('teach the controversy'), ad hominem & strawman arguments.
I am not using this example because I really want to discuss it here, but because I think this sort of shallowness is prevalent, and if spin is going to rule over evidence (very much the premise of the 21st century) then we certainly have receded down some sort of intellectual ladder.
"I'm in my own head now, and it's where I should be" --Snitter