AchtungBono
Refugee
Duh.....hoo you calling STOOPID......?
the internets make us stupid
- Thread starter Irvine511
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
joyfulgirl
Blue Crack Addict
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2001
- Messages
- 16,690
I bought a book today. I'm going to read it. Starting tonight. 
OP
OP
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
I bought a book today. I'm going to read it. Starting tonight.
really? sounds good. what's the title of yo ... oooh, look, cute animal videos of a hedgehog with the munchies!!!
joyfulgirl
Blue Crack Addict
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2001
- Messages
- 16,690
yolland
Forum Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
- Messages
- 7,471
And here we see the degeneracy wrought by freely granting public fora to the most wretchedly banal of spectacles.(emails link to three colleagues)
Last edited:
Vincent Vega
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
(emails link to three colleagues)
I love the internet. It shows me how much more I've to learn English to understand such a sentence.
yolland
Forum Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
- Messages
- 7,471
Anyone who speaks like that except in jest probably isn't worth understanding anyway. 
hiphop
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
one could argue the album as an art form is heading towards extinction and online singles (vs. albums) and ringtones see a great rise
sure we´re used to albums in a way, but some musicians think whats the point in putting 12 songs on an album (with a proper album concept and the flow of a 45min piece) if everyone only buys the three singles that are heavily promoted or the songs that are spread by word of mouth.. and indeed, some bands do it like that, they put out on EP every couple of months instead of an album every 2 years, also to keep the fans interested in the act, once they have caught their attention
some others still like the concept of the album so they stick with it,
of course its highly dependent on genre
its funny to see how sampling culture evolved parallel with the internet
mash it up and do your own, play with the bits and pieces, put them together your own way ,
arranging the media to please you is entertaining
yolland
Forum Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
- Messages
- 7,471
Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?
By MOTOKO RICH
New York Times, July 27
...As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading—diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write. Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.
At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Pride and Prejudice for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs. Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun. According to Department of Education data cited in the report, just over a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun in 2004, down from nearly a third in 1984. 19% of 17-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun in 2004, up from 9% in 1984. (It was unclear whether they thought of what they did on the Internet as “reading.”) “Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media,” Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., wrote in the report’s introduction, “they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”
Children are clearly spending more time on the Internet. In a study of 2032 representative 8-to-18-year-olds, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half used the Internet on a typical day in 2004, up from just under a quarter in 1999. The average time these children spent online on a typical day rose to one hour and 41 minutes in 2004, from 46 minutes in 1999.
The question of how to value different kinds of reading is complicated because people read for many reasons. There is the level required of daily life—to follow the instructions in a manual or to analyze a mortgage contract. Then there is a more sophisticated level that opens the doors to elite education and professions. And, of course, people read for entertainment, as well as for intellectual or emotional rewards. It is perhaps that final purpose that book champions emphasize the most. “Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”
Deborah Konyk always believed it was essential for Nadia and her 8-year-old sister, Yashca, to read books. She regularly read aloud to the girls and took them to library story hours. “Reading opens up doors to places that you probably will never get to visit in your lifetime, to cultures, to worlds, to people,” Ms. Konyk said. Ms. Konyk, who took a part-time job at a dollar store chain a year and a half ago, said she did not have much time to read books herself. There are few books in the house. But after Yashca was born, Ms. Konyk spent the baby’s nap time reading the Harry Potter novels to Nadia, and she regularly brought home new titles from the library.
Despite these efforts, Nadia never became a big reader. Instead, she became obsessed with Japanese anime cartoons on television and comics like Sailor Moon. Then, when she was in the sixth grade, the family bought its first computer. When a friend introduced Nadia to fanfiction.net, she turned off the television and started reading online. Now she regularly reads stories that run as long as 45 Web pages. Many of them have elliptical plots and are sprinkled with spelling and grammatical errors. One of her recent favorites was “My absolutely, perfect normal life...ARE YOU CRAZY? NOT!,” a story based on the anime series Beyblade.
...Nadia said she preferred reading stories online because “you could add your own character and twist it the way you want it to be.” Nadia said she wanted to major in English at college and someday hopes to be published. She does not see a problem with reading few books. “No one’s ever said you should read more books to get into college,” she said.
The simplest argument for why children should read in their leisure time is that it makes them better readers. According to federal statistics, students who say they read for fun once a day score significantly higher on reading tests than those who say they never do. Reading skills are also valued by employers. A 2006 survey by the Conference Board, which conducts research for business leaders, found that nearly 90% of employers rated “reading comprehension” as “very important” for workers with bachelor’s degrees. Department of Education statistics also show that those who score higher on reading tests tend to earn higher incomes.
Critics of reading on the Internet say they see no evidence that increased Web activity improves reading achievement. “What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,” said Mr. Gioia of the N.E.A. “I would believe people who tell me that the Internet develops reading if I did not see such a universal decline in reading ability and reading comprehension on virtually all tests.” ...Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. A recent study of more than 700 low-income, mostly Hispanic and black sixth through 10th graders in Detroit found that those students read more on the Web than in any other medium, though they also read books. The only kind of reading that related to higher academic performance was frequent novel reading, which predicted better grades in English class and higher overall grade point averages.
...Some scientists worry that the fractured experience typical of the Internet could rob developing readers of crucial skills. “Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode,” said Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale who has studied brain scans of children reading.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book. “It takes a long time to read a 400-page book,” said Mr. Spiro of Michigan State. “In a tenth of the time,” he said, the Internet allows a reader to “cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view.”
Zachary Sims, the Old Greenwich, Conn., teenager, often stays awake until 2 or 3 in the morning reading articles about technology or politics—his current passions—on up to 100 Web sites. “On the Internet, you can hear from a bunch of people,” said Zachary, who will attend Columbia University this fall. “They may not be pedigreed academics. They may be someone in their shed with a conspiracy theory. But you would weigh that.” ...The kinds of skills Zachary has developed—locating information quickly and accurately, corroborating findings on multiple sites—may seem obvious to heavy Web users. But the skills can be cognitively demanding.
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90% of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.
In the case of Hunter Gaudet, the Internet has helped him feel more comfortable with a new kind of reading. A varsity lacrosse player in Somers, Conn., Hunter has struggled most of his life to read. After learning he was dyslexic in the second grade, he was placed in special education classes and a tutor came to his home three hours a week. When he entered high school, he dropped the special education classes, but he still reads books only when forced, he said. In a book, “they go through a lot of details that aren’t really needed,” Hunter said. “Online just gives you what you need, nothing more or less.” When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites. Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget. When he was in seventh grade, Hunter was one of 89 students who participated in a study comparing performance on traditional state reading tests with a specially designed Internet reading test. Hunter, who scored in the lowest 10 percent on the traditional test, spent 12 weeks learning how to use the Web for a science class before taking the Internet test. It was composed of three sets of directions asking the students to search for information online, determine which sites were reliable and explain their reasoning. Hunter scored in the top quartile. In fact, about a third of the students in the study, led by Professor Leu, scored below average on traditional reading tests but did well on the Internet assessment.
To date, there have been few large-scale appraisals of Web skills. The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, has developed a digital literacy test known as iSkills that requires students to solve informational problems by searching for answers on the Web. About 80 colleges and a handful of high schools have administered the test so far. But according to Stephen Denis, product manager at ETS, of the more than 20,000 students who have taken the iSkills test since 2006, only 39% of four-year college freshmen achieved a score that represented “core functional levels” in Internet literacy. Now some literacy experts want the federal tests known as the nation’s report card to include a digital reading component. So far, the traditionalists have held sway: The next round, to be administered to fourth and eighth graders in 2009, will test only print reading comprehension. Mary Crovo of the National Assessment Governing Board, which creates policies for the national tests, said several members of a committee that sets guidelines for the reading tests believed large numbers of low-income and rural students might not have regular Internet access, rendering measurements of their online skills unfair.
By MOTOKO RICH
New York Times, July 27
...As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading—diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write. Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.
At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Pride and Prejudice for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs. Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun. According to Department of Education data cited in the report, just over a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun in 2004, down from nearly a third in 1984. 19% of 17-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun in 2004, up from 9% in 1984. (It was unclear whether they thought of what they did on the Internet as “reading.”) “Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media,” Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., wrote in the report’s introduction, “they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”
Children are clearly spending more time on the Internet. In a study of 2032 representative 8-to-18-year-olds, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half used the Internet on a typical day in 2004, up from just under a quarter in 1999. The average time these children spent online on a typical day rose to one hour and 41 minutes in 2004, from 46 minutes in 1999.
The question of how to value different kinds of reading is complicated because people read for many reasons. There is the level required of daily life—to follow the instructions in a manual or to analyze a mortgage contract. Then there is a more sophisticated level that opens the doors to elite education and professions. And, of course, people read for entertainment, as well as for intellectual or emotional rewards. It is perhaps that final purpose that book champions emphasize the most. “Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”
Deborah Konyk always believed it was essential for Nadia and her 8-year-old sister, Yashca, to read books. She regularly read aloud to the girls and took them to library story hours. “Reading opens up doors to places that you probably will never get to visit in your lifetime, to cultures, to worlds, to people,” Ms. Konyk said. Ms. Konyk, who took a part-time job at a dollar store chain a year and a half ago, said she did not have much time to read books herself. There are few books in the house. But after Yashca was born, Ms. Konyk spent the baby’s nap time reading the Harry Potter novels to Nadia, and she regularly brought home new titles from the library.
Despite these efforts, Nadia never became a big reader. Instead, she became obsessed with Japanese anime cartoons on television and comics like Sailor Moon. Then, when she was in the sixth grade, the family bought its first computer. When a friend introduced Nadia to fanfiction.net, she turned off the television and started reading online. Now she regularly reads stories that run as long as 45 Web pages. Many of them have elliptical plots and are sprinkled with spelling and grammatical errors. One of her recent favorites was “My absolutely, perfect normal life...ARE YOU CRAZY? NOT!,” a story based on the anime series Beyblade.
...Nadia said she preferred reading stories online because “you could add your own character and twist it the way you want it to be.” Nadia said she wanted to major in English at college and someday hopes to be published. She does not see a problem with reading few books. “No one’s ever said you should read more books to get into college,” she said.
The simplest argument for why children should read in their leisure time is that it makes them better readers. According to federal statistics, students who say they read for fun once a day score significantly higher on reading tests than those who say they never do. Reading skills are also valued by employers. A 2006 survey by the Conference Board, which conducts research for business leaders, found that nearly 90% of employers rated “reading comprehension” as “very important” for workers with bachelor’s degrees. Department of Education statistics also show that those who score higher on reading tests tend to earn higher incomes.
Critics of reading on the Internet say they see no evidence that increased Web activity improves reading achievement. “What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,” said Mr. Gioia of the N.E.A. “I would believe people who tell me that the Internet develops reading if I did not see such a universal decline in reading ability and reading comprehension on virtually all tests.” ...Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. A recent study of more than 700 low-income, mostly Hispanic and black sixth through 10th graders in Detroit found that those students read more on the Web than in any other medium, though they also read books. The only kind of reading that related to higher academic performance was frequent novel reading, which predicted better grades in English class and higher overall grade point averages.
...Some scientists worry that the fractured experience typical of the Internet could rob developing readers of crucial skills. “Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode,” said Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale who has studied brain scans of children reading.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book. “It takes a long time to read a 400-page book,” said Mr. Spiro of Michigan State. “In a tenth of the time,” he said, the Internet allows a reader to “cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view.”
Zachary Sims, the Old Greenwich, Conn., teenager, often stays awake until 2 or 3 in the morning reading articles about technology or politics—his current passions—on up to 100 Web sites. “On the Internet, you can hear from a bunch of people,” said Zachary, who will attend Columbia University this fall. “They may not be pedigreed academics. They may be someone in their shed with a conspiracy theory. But you would weigh that.” ...The kinds of skills Zachary has developed—locating information quickly and accurately, corroborating findings on multiple sites—may seem obvious to heavy Web users. But the skills can be cognitively demanding.
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90% of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.
In the case of Hunter Gaudet, the Internet has helped him feel more comfortable with a new kind of reading. A varsity lacrosse player in Somers, Conn., Hunter has struggled most of his life to read. After learning he was dyslexic in the second grade, he was placed in special education classes and a tutor came to his home three hours a week. When he entered high school, he dropped the special education classes, but he still reads books only when forced, he said. In a book, “they go through a lot of details that aren’t really needed,” Hunter said. “Online just gives you what you need, nothing more or less.” When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites. Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget. When he was in seventh grade, Hunter was one of 89 students who participated in a study comparing performance on traditional state reading tests with a specially designed Internet reading test. Hunter, who scored in the lowest 10 percent on the traditional test, spent 12 weeks learning how to use the Web for a science class before taking the Internet test. It was composed of three sets of directions asking the students to search for information online, determine which sites were reliable and explain their reasoning. Hunter scored in the top quartile. In fact, about a third of the students in the study, led by Professor Leu, scored below average on traditional reading tests but did well on the Internet assessment.
To date, there have been few large-scale appraisals of Web skills. The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, has developed a digital literacy test known as iSkills that requires students to solve informational problems by searching for answers on the Web. About 80 colleges and a handful of high schools have administered the test so far. But according to Stephen Denis, product manager at ETS, of the more than 20,000 students who have taken the iSkills test since 2006, only 39% of four-year college freshmen achieved a score that represented “core functional levels” in Internet literacy. Now some literacy experts want the federal tests known as the nation’s report card to include a digital reading component. So far, the traditionalists have held sway: The next round, to be administered to fourth and eighth graders in 2009, will test only print reading comprehension. Mary Crovo of the National Assessment Governing Board, which creates policies for the national tests, said several members of a committee that sets guidelines for the reading tests believed large numbers of low-income and rural students might not have regular Internet access, rendering measurements of their online skills unfair.
deep
Blue Crack Addict
It seems like the article Yoland posted supports the premise of this thread.
I tend to agree. And this is not directed at the young people that take the time to post in here. There is a lot of good thought and writing skills displayed in many of the replies.
But, I do believe in general, yes the internets are making people stupid.
There is a new book:
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)
This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of today’s under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings.
I tend to agree. And this is not directed at the young people that take the time to post in here. There is a lot of good thought and writing skills displayed in many of the replies.
But, I do believe in general, yes the internets are making people stupid.
There is a new book:
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)
This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of today’s under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings.
^
Very American-centric view (not surprising) in that article.
The internet has done immense good abroad in having young people pick up English way faster than they ever did sitting their asses in classrooms for 10 years. It's also opened up the world for those in developing countries. I have a cousin in Eastern Europe who is really involved in a particular grassroots organization and she said if it weren't for the help they received from similar organizations in the U.S. and the U.K., all of whom they found and contacted online, they never would have been this well organized this quickly.
I don't think this article considered anything other than the perceived American experience.
Very American-centric view (not surprising) in that article.
The internet has done immense good abroad in having young people pick up English way faster than they ever did sitting their asses in classrooms for 10 years. It's also opened up the world for those in developing countries. I have a cousin in Eastern Europe who is really involved in a particular grassroots organization and she said if it weren't for the help they received from similar organizations in the U.S. and the U.K., all of whom they found and contacted online, they never would have been this well organized this quickly.
I don't think this article considered anything other than the perceived American experience.
OP
OP
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
and, based on the excerpt, it could have been written in 1989. absolutely nothing new in the criticisms it levels:
that could be blamed on the TV ... or movies ... or rock music ... or, were this the 19th century, those subversive novels.
Hah...good luck finding so-called "adults" who can understand these concepts either. If we did, then those statistics of Americans who reject evolution would be far lower.
Try 1987. The book is called "The Closing of the American Mind," by Allan Bloom. Although I must admit, since I think the book is very well-written and ultimately challenges you to think critically, rather than swap one dogma for another, I think it's worth reading just for that. And even though it is 21 years old now, much of what he brings up is just as relevant today. Supposedly, it has been mentioned as the book that started the "culture wars." Unfortunately, while it is a well-written, non-bigoted text that very much invites an equally intelligent and reasoned response even from those who disagree, liberal academics just dismissed it offhand and much of what his fellow conservatives have written afterward is just fearmongering, blithering nonsense that just tosses any form of reason or integrity to the wayside.
Diamond surprised me by reading it after I mentioned it here the last time, and hated it.
BrownEyedBoy
Rock n' Roll Doggie
What I've noticed is that I feel more inclined to skim through every large body of words I read. I don't actually stop and get a feel for the combination of words that the author could come up with.
I've always had this massive ADD problem and I'm almost positive the internet hasn't helped, either. Each one of those articles you posted I took substantial amounts of breaks from read through them whether it was to IM or to check some other tab in which I was navigating on. I guess these "instant gratification" times are truly altering the way we think.
I think that students have more to lose with the way media distrubition has been changing lately because more often than not we are "forced" to study straight out of books and for me particularly, it's become harder and harder to follow my line of reading because I've become so accustomed to multi-task. It takes a much bigger effort to stay on task and not drift to whatever other distraction I most probably have in my room.
I've always had this massive ADD problem and I'm almost positive the internet hasn't helped, either. Each one of those articles you posted I took substantial amounts of breaks from read through them whether it was to IM or to check some other tab in which I was navigating on. I guess these "instant gratification" times are truly altering the way we think.
I think that students have more to lose with the way media distrubition has been changing lately because more often than not we are "forced" to study straight out of books and for me particularly, it's become harder and harder to follow my line of reading because I've become so accustomed to multi-task. It takes a much bigger effort to stay on task and not drift to whatever other distraction I most probably have in my room.
Similar threads
- Locked
- Sticky
Latest posts
-
-
-
3 Irishmen and a Dutchman Walk Into A Sphere - General Discussion Thread Part III
- Latest: Headache in a Suitcase
-
-
-
-
-
