Dumbed down
May 13, 2008Well, this won’t be controversial:
To Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, the present is a good time to be young only if you don’t mind a tendency toward empty-headedness. In “The Dumbest Generation,” he argues that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy.
Adults are so busy imagining the ways that technology can improve classroom learning or improve the public debate that they’ve blinded themselves to the collective dumbing down that is actually taking place. The kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic, distracting online world at the expense of more enriching activities – like opening a book or writing complete sentences.
Mr. Bauerlein presents a wealth of data to show that young people, with the aid of digital media, are intensely focusing on themselves, their peers and the present moment. YouTube and MySpace, he says, are revealingly named: These and other top Web destinations are “peer to peer” environments in the sense that their juvenile users have populated them with predictably juvenile content. The sites where students spend most of their time “harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of the lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters.”
I know every old generation has been dismissive of every new generation and that the new generations eventually grow up and take their rightful place — we’ve talked about that here before. But maybe there is something different this time. What happens when we try to reinvent the culture over and over instead of “passing down a fixed, canonical culture” that evolves gradually?
May 13, 2008 at 10:38 am
I’m pretty sure this is just a variation of “those damn kids and their rock & roll music.”
May 13, 2008 at 10:45 am
Technology is all well and good, but there comes a time when education and wisdom have to be added to the equation.
To have technology without them would pretty much be what we have today…folly.
But it does make the marketing gurus salivate like Pavlov’s Dog…all the way to the bank!
B.G.
May 13, 2008 at 11:35 am
It’s fairly simple to make money in business: simply produce goods and/or services at a cost less than what people are willing to pay for them. With the much lower costs of doing business online, compared to brick-and-mortar businesses with high labor costs, it’s easier to do that online than on main street.
Most startups, though, aren’t businesses. They’re gambles. They figure if they make enough noise, there’ll be a bigger fool coming along who will want to buy them out. If they get big enough, fast enough, one will wander along - but most startups are “me too” outfits, and the supply of fools runs out pretty quick.
Those marketing gurus, Bob, most of them know how to salivate - but when they go to the bank, it’s to the loan window. The difference between them and a pigeon is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a fancy new car.
May 13, 2008 at 2:38 pm
LMAO, Harl…now THAT is funny…!
(You MUST be from Pennsy!)
B.G.