Random Ranting

a totally random thought struck me this morning whilst stoning working in the office.

i realized i've become smarter in some ways,

and dumber in others (or is it)...

all thanks to the advancing technology

i log in to the interwebs (LOLSpeak for internet) daily to check on the news.  smart.

spot an unfamiliar word? mouseover the favorite Dictionary.com bookmark for the answers. smart.

convenient browser tools allow readers to bookmark the article and come back to the article after to where u stopped after taking a poop. smart.

lo and behold, u can even bring the news to the toilet!

(without having to fumble with flipping the pages with ur poo-infested fingers)

i.e. if u're still within the range of the wifi network. smart.

if everything's so smart (and fast to boot) then what's so wrong?

read here..

Newly awarded Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing has used her acceptance speech to tell the world that the internet makes us dumb.   According to Lessing, who was too old and ill to make the speech herself and instead had someone else read it out, the inanities of the internet have seduced a generation, and we live in a fragmenting culture where people read nothing and know nothing of the world.   It gets better, apparently if you study “computers” you lack culture as well:  We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.

The Guardian has the full text of Lessing’s speech here

then, there's my favorite part: The Rebuttal.

It's Not The Internet Making People Dumb... It's Other People Who Benefit From You Being Dumb from the agnotology-at-work dept There have been various attempts to claim that the internet makes people stupid, though that seems difficult to support in actuality. As someone recently sent to me (uncredited, tragically -- so someone feel free to claim it!): "the internet doesn't cause stupidity, it just makes your stupidity more obvious to others." However, it does need to be admitted that there are a ton of ridiculous ideas online with no factual basis -- and some people cling to those ideas fervently. This certainly goes against the early utopian theories of the internet that said making more information available to people would help fight ignorance.

The full story here

... and yes, i must add, multi-tasking is yet another smart quality in the technological age.

i just lurrrrve page-hopping on the browser while chatting on MSN & Skype and doing my work in my email & CRM client all at the same time!!!