<- wants to smoke weed with you

The downside of having so much information readily available to us is that we might treat the internet as a second brain, as a sort of crutch to rely on if we cannot be bothered truly learning or even remembering what we have read. This lowers the urgency for reading and properly learning things - a lot of processed information will never reach the knowledge stage.

While being taught in class, there are students who ask their professors whether the material is assessable, as if something isn't worth learning unless it'll be directly assessed in the final exam, because if the student ever does actually need it, they can simply look it up on the net.

However, there are undoubtedly many positive points for having information so readily available to us and I don't think I really need to go into that territory. But I will point out that some professions have been shifting their focus such that the ability to learn is just as important as knowledge already acquired (the software industry for example). The availability of information facilitates the on-job learning required for projects.

The phrase, 'moving towards meaningless' is pointless, and I can't imagine how you would articulate the meaning of earlier generations. To give life a meaning, you pretty much have to presuppose the existence of some external creator that apply its understanding of life's meaning onto us.
Otherwise we can only forge meaning from our own context, and any 'meaning' we alight on would be just as arbitrary and pointless as any other.


Regarding the information age, I'd say the availability of information is placing less importance on the amassing of information and more on the ability to shift through the multitude of sources and come up with a decent analysis of the matter.
Not that that wasn't always an important skill, but that seems to be the direction society is heading in.

If we're saying that availability of information is lessening the motivation to learn, then we're not really commenting on the state of technology, but the state of humanity. Sure, we might think that the state of technology provides causation for this, but when you really think about it, you realize that regardless of the tools provided, the force behind those tools being put to use is dependent on the persons using them.

I beg to disagree that, for instance, an aspiring doctor in the 1500's had a more noble and relevant motivation than an aspiring doctor in our current time. The mode at which either people acquire the skills necessary to perform in their profession is irrelevant. They both end up saving lives.

What I want to say is that, if anything, we're MORE motivated to learn, specifically in professions, because of the availability of knowledge and the modes at which we are able to acquire it.
Compared to the past, we're much better equipped to make places for ourselves in a professional life than we ever were. We see more and more needs being met as a result of technological knowledge than we ever have.
We just have to look at this kind of thing in a broader spectrum.
Don't be discouraged by crapbags who never wish to accomplish anything. That has nothing to do with the options available to them.
People have been people for as long as they've existed.
No amount of cushion is going to change the basic desire to excel.

We're just focusing too much on all the people who don't.

Sorry, I didn't make it too clear in my post but I actually agree that the availability of information nowadays is motivating more people to learn - it's so easy to jump on Wiki and read about anything whether you're interested in ossuaries, Samuel Coleridge or blue-vein cheese.

I just think that the quality of learning (on the net) is often worse than say, from a book, because of the lack of urgency in memorising concepts/information. I'm not insinuating that people's memories are improving/deteriorating throughout the ages or that people are nowadays more lazy. I'm just saying that if all information is at your fingertips, there's not really a great urgency to remember what you read, provided that you remember enough to find that information in the future.

It probably sounds like some crackpot theory but I feel like I naturally put more effort into learning/remembering things that I know I can't just google and understand in two seconds, whether it's because the material is quite advanced (and I'm learning it from a book) or the nature of the application of the material precludes looking it up (i.e. no time to google a foreign word while you're conversing in that language).

Students might once have been required to rote-learn certain things like the colours of common ions in chemistry but I imagine there's less emphasis on that nowadays since these facts can simply be googled. I am wondering if material which is traditionally rote-learned will be entirely phased out in the future for this reason? That could arguably give students more time to spend on actual concepts which require learning and not just rote memorisation (knowledge). On the other hand, do we want people to have to consult some external source every time they're asked to recall a non-conceptual piece of information? I know this is a bit of an extreme view of things, but technology is only going to become more streamlined within our lives, and so this topic will become more interesting/relevant as time goes on.

if you're ever in chicago...

:D

I see what you mean and I agree.
I guess I'm not sure, at this point, whether all this is a positive or a negative. Your last sentence really sums it up though.
If I may indulge in a bit of science fiction for a moment, I could suppose that eventually we may have technology that allows us to instantaneously learn and memorize any particular knowledge. If that were to become a reality at some point in our future, then the observations we're making about the current state of knowledge acquisition would lose relevancy.
In the here and now, though, I'd hope we keep our options open and hold off on making a bonfire out of our libraries. :)

And religion. The more we know about science the stronger case people build against god/gods. Of course im sue you all knew that already. Just pointing that out.

I think in the relative long run the information age will serve to advance scientific and biological evolution.

I'm not talking about creating super humans or r2d2's, getting high with Chewbaca or logical with Spock. But entering further into the unknown. I think all of our history tells us this is what will happen. The more information we can share the more solutions and conclusions that can be reached. Growing presumably closer to the unattainable absence of unknown.

It's repeatedly been pointed out in this thread that it's all about what you do with the information available to you. It's easier and more common to just let it go in one ear and out the other and be used as a "back-up drive" for your memory. However there is no doubt that it opens a world of opportunity for the properly motivated and most ambitious learners among us.

i would encourage (re)reading my first post.

if physics in particular has taught us anything in the last hundred years or so, it's that even though we might be able to set up experiments and formulate reasonable expectations, we don't really know what is happening, how it's happening, or why it's happening. all science tells you is that when this one thing happens, this other thing will usually happen afterwards. it can get more and more detailed, but the level of 'how' and 'why' always slips between the gaps.