Raidhyn 2.0

This weekend the Wall Street Journal ran a pair of articles posing the questions: Does the internet make us smarter or dumber? The articles don’t focus on the individual but more on the human race as an entire population. I thought they were both very well written and more importantly, got me thinking about it. In the end i cast my vote and along with more than half of the WSJ readers I believe the internet makes us smarter.

Of course, after some thought I felt what I truly believe, is it makes us more knowledgable.

‘The world at your fingertips’ has never been a catchphrase more true than it is right now. In the May 31 issue of TIME magazine the cover story was on Facebook. The inside headline was “Friends without Borders.” Twitter gives us a constant stream of information, wikipedia provides us with a library of information proofread and factchecked by millions of people across the globe.

When I sit infront of a peice of 400 year old music like I did this morning wondering what it sounded like, YouTube provides me with a live performance in my living room.

Do i feel well informed? Knowledgeable? Smarter than I did last year? Last month? Yes.

I don’t subscribe to a newspaper. I read google.com/news. When I was growing up one of my clearest memory is seeing my dad sitting cross legged on the couch, a cup of coffee in one hand, the Wall Street Journal or the Sunday Chicago Tribune in the other.  And there is a classic aesthetic about that practice I’m sure will be missed as we push on into the world of digital information. My son will no doubt grow up with an image of dad crouched over a computer screen or reading the news off an iPad. Of course, my son also knows what VLC icons look like and where his favorite Pixar movies are kept on my desktop.

What do you think about all of this?