Re: The Web Is Making People Stupid (TWIMPS)

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TWIMPS.  Note 5

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Peircers,

At the risk of blurring my own intended focus, I just ran across
the links to a book that Peter's earlier remarks brought to mind:

Maryanne Wolf (2007), “Proust and the Squid:
The Story and Science of the Reading Brain”,
Harper Collins, New York.

MW: When all is said and done, of course, Socrates' worries were not so much
     about literacy as about what might happen to knowledge if the young had
     unguided, uncritical access to information. For Socrates, the search for
     real knowledge did not revolve around information. Rather, it was about
     finding the essence and purpose of life. Such a search required a lifelong
     commitment to developing the deepest critical and analytical skills, and to
     internalizing personal knowledge through the prodigious use of memory, and
     long effort. Only these conditions assured Socrates that a student was capable
     of moving from exploring knowledge in dialogue with a teacher to a path of
     principles that lead to action, virtue, and ultimately to a "friendship with
     his god." Socrates saw knowledge as a force for the higher good; anything —
     such as literacy — that might endanger it was anathema. (Wolf, p. 220).

MW: There are deeper meanings in these Socratic concerns, however. Throughout the
     story of humankind, from the Garden of Eden to the universal access provided by
     the Internet, questions of who should know what, when, and how remain unresolved.
     At a time when over a billion people have access to the most extensive expansion
     of information ever compiled, we need to turn our analytical skills to questions
     about a society's responsibility for the transmission of knowledge. Ultimately,
     the questions Socrates raised for Athenian youth apply equally to our own. Will
     unguided information lead to an illusion of knowledge, and thus curtail the more
     difficult, time-consuming, critical thought processes that lead to knowledge itself?
     Will the split-second immediacy of information gained from a search engine and the
     sheer volume of what is available derail the slower, more deliberative processes
     that deepen our understanding of complex concepts, of another's inner thought
     processes, and of our own consciousness? (Wolf, p. 221).

Reference Points —

• http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=19031
• http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=19031&view=findpost&p=162745
• http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=19031&view=findpost&p=162811

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