f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I often marvel at how useful the Internet is in day to day life. If you want to know something you 'Google it' and within seconds you have pages of information on your screen. All you need to do then is weed out the fact form the fiction.

Compared to just 20 years ago this is an amazing progession for much of humankind and of course the knowledge base is increasing all the time!

I remember doing a school project where every week we had to find out about someone famous like Marie Curie or Thomas Edison.... off to the library I went every Saturday to do my research for a few hours whereas today I would have it done in no time via the Internet!

Therefore young people today should have masses more knowledge on any number of subjects than we had at the same age just due to ease of access to the information if nothing else.

Yet I don't see that, if anything many have less knowledge on many subjects as they seem to live in a world of social media and gaming pretty much disinterested in anything else! My next door neighbour had her sister's family stay over at Christmas and barely got a word out of the teenage kids who spent the whole time on their phones on Facebook! Even her sister was at it half the time! Apparently when she suggested they all play a board game for a laugh they gave up half way through as the phones were never out of their hands!

There was a survey in a magazine last year where they asked 1000 teenagers/early 20s questions such as where is Australia and who was the prime minister and the perentages getting those questions wrong were simply staggering!

Imagine if just 25% of the time people spent talking crap on Facebook and the likes they spent learning something how much more knowledgeable people could be!

It leaves me wondering whether the Internet is a good thing or a bad thing. It has the power to be a very good thing, but I wonder if the way we are choosing to use it is making it more of a bad thing!

What do you think?

Chip

I think you pretty much summed it up in your post. I've just spent the past hour scouring the net for a villa to stay in in October. Must have looked at 100's. Years ago that would have meant a trip out to the travel agent, loads of books then a lot of phone calls to check availability etc.

There is also a lot of bad as well, but there is bad in all things I suppose anhway.

LSherratt

iTrader: (1)

It's been like this for ages though. Kids getting smart phones and tablets at the age of 6+ and grow up with the technology. My girlfriends step-sister is 14 years old, she hardly speaks and is glued to her phone literally 24/7. A few other of my younger relatives are exactly the same. Half it though is probably down to the parents, although it seems to be a losing battle because I feel that it's almost considered 'the norm'. I admit that I am on FB a lot and browsing the web pointlessly on my phone, simply because it's so easy to do and it's a good way of filling time on my lunch break, like now! Although most of the stuff I browse is useless, I think that if you were still at school, then it could put it to good use on your lunch break or between lessons just to find out that little bit extra.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_effect means the Internet is making many people less intelligent, not more.

The human race, particularly in the West, is increasingly becoming a race of machine-tenders, as predicted by Isaac Asimov in the 1960s, helped significantly by the Internet. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/2...si-v-fair.html

Not sure what it will ultimatly lead to, but we are at the tip of the iceberg of the Internet's effects. I think Wall-E nailed mankind's future quite well personally

DYK

just to the other day some guy at work commented on how a group of youngsters were sitting in the pub all together but non of them talking to each other,they were all playing about with their smart phones,he said don't nobody talk to each other anymore.
We may have all this tech now and info is easy to get but, now we are probably more lazy generation than years ago.
I suppose even wading through the info on google etc is too much hard work for some.

RA Dunk

Free ****.
Free Music.
Shopping delivered to my door.
Online Gaming.

The Internet has buckets of win for me!

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

+1

The **** and to-the-door shopping (in that order ) does it for me.

Lydia72

People have always been thick and ignorant, just that now you can spot them easier
(the amount of people on forums that don't know the difference between lose and loose amazes me)

My ex-SIL didn't know where 'asylum' was but had heard it mentioned on the news, my brother found her looking at a map...
A few years back I had to explain to her where beef and lamb came from, she was aware of cows but could not understand the link between animals and meat. She's in her forties so pre-internet for half her life.

I was poorly educated but love being able to look things up instantly. Not necessarily high-brow stuff; if I don't understand a film plot I'll have a peep at IMDB while I'm watching it.
If you have a desire to learn you'll find a way to do it, internet or books or whatever.

Blue by You

iTrader: (23)

Of course the web has some major positives going for it, but on balance I see the internet as a marginally more negative influence on human kind, largely because it panders to the culture of instant gratification.
You don't have to work for your knowledge.
You don't have to work for your shopping (enter any necessary deliverable commodity).
You don't have to work for your kicks.
And you don't have to work at being decent to folk online.
Also I'm sick of being 'spied' upon by clever-dick button-pushers who think they know what I want and supply me with endless streams of insidious advertising.

And it's absolutely chock full of stuff that most humans are not meant to see in the course of a normal civilised life. Not just sexual perversion, but images of death and cruelty that renders us all worse off for having witnessed it.

I'm no prude, I like a bit of **** as much as the next guy, but there are images I (we?) have all seen that we perhaps wish we hadn't. Of course you're not obliged to go looking for offensive material, but what's to stop you?

If I can paraphrase a quote from Jurrasic Park, "Yeah, but you were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should"

^Qwerty^

People don't need to learn things anymore, because access to look things up is instantaneous. In IT, let’s say you buy an router, switch etc. and want it to do something; whilst the office guru will know the basics, i.e be able to navigate and configure the Cisco IOS for example, if they want to do a specific config, the answer is there via Google nearly each and every time. The net result I think is that people don’t value knowledge as much as they use to.
I still do a bit of hands on now and again, and recently had a problem with Business Objects. After raising a support call with the vendor, they were unable to fix it after three weeks, at which point I put some serious effort in to filtering the dross from Google and hey presto, problem fixed. When I closed the support call saying I’d fixed the issue, I wasn’t even asked how I’d done it.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I get the impression from the younger ones at work are pretty dim, always on their phones and seem to have no interest in "old stuff", Even some of the thirty somethings make a point in a conversation when you tell them something of saying it was before their time, of do **** off, I know about many things that happened before my birth. They take the mickey out of a bloke at work who is about the most knowledgeable and interesting bloke I know, because he doesnt have an Iphone and wear ***** hipster tosser clothes.

Society is about instant gratification, knowledge requires effort, knowledge spurs further learning, I am no super educated boffin but compared to some of the dumbheads I meet I am a brainbox.

The internet is great, I used to just not know stuff, I just now look it up and read around the subject, perhaps it is good for those with enquiring minds ?

Kwik

iTrader: (10)

Honestly though, why do you need to know what the capital of Australia is? how many people have actually used algebra since they left school?.
I think it's streamlining learning, or towards a persons specific field or interest. I taught myself how to play guitar back in the early 00's, in the golden age of the internet as it was known, and that was with relatively limited tab sites compared to now.
I certainly wouldn't have attempted my project without sites such as this and being able to google certain problems.

My eldest Son lives with his Mum, and her laziness means he spends an awful lot of time on his Xbox online with his "mates", but then that's what the majority of his peers do, and if he didn't he'd get left out. He's quite distant, and emotionally stifled, he struggles to find anything else remotely interesting.
My youngest boy is the opposite, although he also has an xbox, its a treat for good behaviour, and an hour or two a day if he's behaved. Always reading and writing, drawing and building stuff.
One thing I've managed this xmas is to get them both playing chess .
It's a different world to when we grew up. I can't imagine there is a higher percentage of paedophiles nowadays as there was back in the '80's but the media has scared us to death, and allowing your kids out at all hours as we were allowed to do would probably get them taken away from us in this day and age.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

That is an extremely good point and one that probably needs a separate thread. The media are very good at controlling the population through fear as is the government's wish of course!

ScoobyWon't

I've actually spent the last couple of days researching a possible new angle for my business.

Not only has the internet given me access to a hugely knowledgeable expert - who I actually think should be charging $$$$ as a consultant rather than giving his knowledge away - but allowed me to check the availability and prices of materials, even when the suppliers were closed on New Years Day. The knowledge I have gained is enough to allow me to seriously consider trailing some new products.

In terms of advertising, the internet gives me a shop window with potential customers contacting me through the website, where around 90% come via Google, 5% from other search engines and then 5% word of mouth.

On-line shopping is brilliant as far as I'm concerned. I can save so much time by ordering what I need instead of wasting time, fuel and parking fees by going somewhere which might not even have what I need.

Social media should be like driving - until you prove you meet a minimum standard, you shouldn't be able to do it.

dpb

Internet has just made things / information faster to get hold of


Is that good?

Who knows

Turbohot

^ This.

This is what I think.

Internet is like a knife. You can use it to kill self or others, or you can prepare vegetables, cut ropes etc. do useful useful things with it.

There are for and against arguments; like with anything. I know many young people who have great social skills and social life and they're not Internet shy either. I think Internet has made communication and the spread of the knowledge much faster and easier, which is good. As a double-edged knife, Internet has a capacity to make one more sociable as well more and more insular.

It's the people not Internet that have to be blamed when things go out of balance. Internet is just a tool. People use it the way they want to.

I see many a people that disconnect with the real world, and stay absorbed in the world of Internet. Whether they're talking crap to strangers or familiar people, that's not the point. The point is that the cyber-absorption is an escape for a lot of people, as the reality sucks. As long as the right balance is struck between both virtuality and reality, Internet can be utilised quite positively IMO.

greenonedave

The internet is a bit like religion, works well till some buggers muck about with it to suit themselves.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The internet as a information resource and to some extent as a retail medium has done nothing but good. Its saved me thousands of pounds, its also provided me with information both on a study level and work level where I'd be screwed without it.

What I think has gone sour is the social aspect of it.

Main reason IMO is that everybody is on the internet now. Back in the early days the internet was only reserved for people who could afford it and be able use a computer. The global masses couldn't afford it, and those who could, didn't know how to use a computer. So the types of people on social forums was alot more like-minded. These days though you get the lowest scum and misfits to contend with, just like in day to day life, where once the internet was a escape from these.

Oh.....and the ****...

lozgti1

We had a telex machine when I started work And I like going to a real shop.Not that I don't give most of my most to Amazon :~)

Don't think it's the internet making kids bit dimmer.Think that's just educayshun nowadays.Even brightest can't spell

I just wonder what's next with the internet.Are we going to get bored of social networking?

Turbohot

Yes, nothing beats real shop. Seeing is believing, and the more senses you involve in believing something, more credible it becomes.

This social networking etc., does it always go any further to real life social networking, or do people just chat **** to invisible people on tinterbet? I do know the answer to that, but this 'Me, My Laptop and Irene inside it' is a bit unhealthy, if the habit is formed.

Basically, the phrase 'social networking' should be re-phrased as 'cyber networking'.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Or "anti-social networking"

daveyj

iTrader: (1)

Corrected for target audience accuracy

On the balance of things I think it is a good thing. The darker stuff is there if you want to seek it out.......or you can choose not to. I love car club membership and shopping for car insurance is way easier than it was when I first had to man the phones with a yellow pages. The only skill getting numbed is the haggling one. The High Street will evolve into something else and kids will eventually tire of eye complaints, which reminds me of my Mother's own warnings of me getting square eyes from watching too much tv back in the 80s.

albob

one negative of the internet is you no longer need to remember 'stuff' - just do a 'google'. Long term effect -- who knows ???

Turbohot

Kwik

iTrader: (10)

To give an example of how internet driven a lot of business' are these days.

Euro car parts. One of our drivers regularly fixes his own van. He looked online for a part, they had it priced as £70 inc VAT. He went to the store not a mile from our work where they handed him the part and said "That's £90 please". After a long discussion he came back, ordered it online, they rang him to tell him the part was in stock and ready for collection and he drove back. The cashier wasn't too happy when he had to hand it over for £70 instead.

Turbohot

Very good point.

Again, it depends upon an individual. I read something about Beatrix Potter on Wikipedia yesterday. I remember everything! Just ask me, and I'll Google it for you.

Honestly, it's ironic of us lot to critically appraise Internet, while we happen to be the part of this cyber system. However, no one can ban us for discussing it, either.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

I never really "got" social networking, well, in terms of the likes of twitter and facebook. I simply don't use them that much. Email, yes, but less so these days. Instant messengers I try to avoid, as I know a few people who get the hump if I show up as being online and I ignore them. I do ignore them, but its because I'm doing something, they also get the hump when I told them I'm busy too, so I could never win LOL so I stay in stealth/lurk mode At least with the phone I can blame it being on charge in the bedroom whilst I'm downstairs etc. Forums however is a main stay; thats where I started when I first got online, and I suppose thats why I prefer them over twitter etc.

The celebrity gossip stuff is just annoying. The online versions of newpapers moreso. Everything just seems to be getting more and more sensationalised or recycled (For example The Daily Mail recycled a one year old story about a stray dog in China paying vigil to its mate that had been ran over...my mum showed it me, dated as Dec 2013...was it bollox...I read that same story back in 2012). But the flipside is some sources do give insight to things that are often blanked from the press. Wikileaks probably is the most famous example...good? Bad? I'll sit on the fence with that. But other sites can be alot more impartial so its refreshing to getaway from the Daily Mail/Newscorp diatribe.

The advertising linked in with social networking has to be the worst, for example a facebook alert saying...."Aunty Doris" Likes Tesco cabbages. I mean come on, do I really give a f**k if a "friend" on Facebook "likes" something.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Don't even need to go back home to use the PC now;

Just order via a smart phone on 3G (or 4G for those within the M25...or GPRS for me ).

I've done that at PCworld with their collect instore stuff with the cheaper "web only" prices

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Agree 100%. If I was on Facebook I'd want an 'I f**King hate you' button

Turbohot

That would be quite an anti-social thing to do.

IMO Facebook format looks disjointed, cluttered and full of informal and non-issue material posted by peeps. Not an FB fan.