This house believes that the internet is dumbing us down - opening speeches

First proposing speech

Internet, the network of networks, is nothing more than a net disillusion. When I started to use it, I thought that Internet would be a key tool for accelerating human enhancement. I thought that we would all develop our knowledge thanks to the Internet and the ease of access to information it provides. I was blinded, and strongly mistaken. In terms of information, Internet offers quantity rather than quality. Because of the Internet, we now seek breadth of information, rather than depth. […]

By CP

First opposing speech

Internet is our century’s biggest threat for our minds’ integrity! Internet deeply formatted and annihilated our brains! Internet is making us stupid, lazy and even arrogant! There is not a single day when we do not hear or read such unfounded statements and accusations on how internet is dumbing us down. Let’s take a moment to end this crisis of consciousness and a minute, to prove that internet is doing everything expect dumbing us down. […]

By AM

First proposing speech

Internet, the network of networks, is nothing more than a net disillusion. When I started to use it, I thought that Internet would be a key tool for accelerating human enhancement. I thought that we would all develop our knowledge thanks to the Internet and the ease of access to information it provides. I was blinded, and strongly mistaken. In terms of information, Internet offers quantity rather than quality. Because of the Internet, we now seek breadth of information, rather than depth.

We, Internet users, all suffer from a new disease: the infobesity. Indeed, as soon as we are connected to the World Wide Web, we are submerged by huge waves of information, where important and futile elements are mixed with no distinction. The Internet inundates us with more information than we can absorb. A first consequence is that we are less and less able to make the difference between key information and less important information.

If we now look at the quality of the information we get from the Internet, the situation is even more frightening. What we observe is a mix between expertise and amateurism, which contributes to blurring the difference between scientific information, and John Doe’s personal opinion. The Internet has become the place where anyone, even someone who has never been to school, can write an article in an encyclopedia (This is the business of Wikipedia). The science is devaluated, and leaves space of the triumph of judgments, preconceived ideas, and illusions. Andrew Keen, in his book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, shows how 2.0 Internet has triggered a loss of accuracy in news and information. Indeed, it is now easier to copy and paste and article on a given topic without checking its veracity, rather than to develop an in-depth and critical analysis. The Internet is killing original thinking. How painful must that be for our teachers? Instead of reading their students’ personal work, they now receive copy-and paste pieces of work.

Third, we have entered the era of ‘drifting attention’, as dubbed by Linda Stone. We are unable to concentrate on a task more than 3 minutes, or on a text longer than 3 lines. Here again, how painful must that be for our teachers? As students, we never read the texts and documents they provide us. In her book Distracted, Maggie Jackson emphasizes this phenomenon and raises our attention on our losing this ability to focus. And where does that come from? Mainly from the Internet actually. Indeed, it is impossible to surf the web without being constantly distracted by the wizz of a chat, of a twit, of an incoming email which will draw our attention away from the task we were performing. A 2008 report called Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, commissioned by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, found evidences that this issue of “drifting attention” also affects researchers and scientists: ‘Deep log studies show that, from undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, 'flicking' behavior in digital libraries. Society is dumbing down.’ The Internet forces us into constant mental juggling.

Some of you might still be thinking that it is impossible that a mere tool can impact their mental abilities that much. However, there is a scientific explanation for that. Our brain is very flexible: it adapts to the tools that we use. When we get to use a new technology on a regular basis, we modify our mental habits, and this is directly modifying the cellular structure of our brain. It was the case when we discovered printing, it was the case when we discovered phoning. It is now again the case with using the Internet. So truly, the Internet is dumbing us down!

Please consider this as a call to open your eyes on the world we are living in and on the dangers of the Internet.

CP

First opposing speech

Internet is our century’s biggest threat for our minds’ integrity! Internet deeply formatted and annihilated our brains! Internet is making us stupid, lazy and even arrogant! There is not a single day when we do not hear or read such unfounded statements and accusations on how internet is dumbing us down. Let’s take a moment to end this crisis of consciousness and a minute, to prove that internet is doing everything expect dumbing us down.

First of all, what is Internet? Internet is a worldwide technological network able to broadcast different format of information. As you understood it well, internet is a device, only a device. To make internet so powerful that it can enter our brain and modify our nervous system to make us stupid is almost a bad sci-fi movie script. Indeed, internet is a device and is working like any other technological device, by being fully dependent on its users. We are entirely responsible of which uses we make of internet as well as sorting information we found. It is true that the internet is vast and content-saturated. That is why it is essential to have enough distance and critical sense to eliminate incorrect, unworthy and “dumb” content (even though, the notion of “dumb content” is disputable as one content can be dumb to someone and completely adequate to somebody else’s researches). If you are not able to create this necessary distance while surfing on internet, it is still not internet that is dumbing you down but you, dumbing you down by using internet just like you are dumbing you down in doing any other activities without a critical sense.

Secondly, let’s analyze who the truly opponents of internet’s pertinence are. Without making any general report, it is often a criticism from the older generations, to illustrate, an 18 year-old teenager will rarely say that internet is making him stupid, despite his parents will. It reflects a real cleavage between two generations and more importantly, a struggle between two major cultures. On the one hand, there is classical culture based on books which is considered as noble, ancient and unique. On the other hand, there is the “web culture” which is abusively seen as vulgar, imprecise and somehow degrading. For both, these are only simplistic judgments. It is not because internet changes our relation to knowledge that it is “bad” or “good” or making us “stupid” or “clever”. Moreover, finding information on internet is just as worthy as finding information in a classical format. In that case, it is obviously easier to reject new forms of collecting knowledge and stick to a reassuring yet boring routine rather than taking the risk to try something new.

Last but least, we all know that information is power, for example, let’s imagine a negotiation case. You are a purchaser manager, ready to negotiate netbooks with a famous netbook supplier.  During the negotiation, you search the supplier on specialized purchasing website. You learn, at you great astonishment, that this supplier was not able to fulfill his entire command to another client, one week ago.  He, of course, forgot to mention this very insignificant detail to you. This is crucial information that can completely turn the negotiation in your favor. I can assure you that, at this precise moment, you do not look dumb at all, but your supplier does. The general issue is that, it can be disturbing to think that everybody, without any discrimination, as long as that person has an internet connection, can have instant access to compromising information about you. So yes, we prefer to say that internet is making people stupid in order to make them stay far away from this incredible weapon which materializes into an immense web of information.

AM