It’s from a lecture entitled “Dostoevsky, Camus, and the Problem of Suffering” and can be found at Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century website.  Any opportunity to hear about Dostoevsky is well worth it.

note: the thumbnail image for this post is a depiction of Dosteovsky’s chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” from his Brothers Karamozov

There is merit in this line of argument.  There are many lazy student (and probably even more lazy adults) that will use the Internet as an excuse to switch their brains completely off.  The need for critical thinking skills and innovation will not diminish, rather it will most certainly increase, as will the need to have a working knowledge of History (and this is where our schools are failing dismally).  Yet, the “students in this day and age are all idiots” argument, at the end of the day, I think is just a little bit too simplistic.  As much as we all get a little self-congratulatory / slightly terrified chuckle when we hear reports that 33% of American students can’t point to Lousiana on a map, we still can’t just toss our hands in the air and give up.  If kids aren’t learning facts, what are they learning?

I started to come to the conclusion that the Internet is prompting a new style of thinking in a article I read (I’ll find it soon) that our notions of plagarism are completely lost (as is unintelligible) to kids today.  The author made the point that the entire approach to the papers they were assigned was markedly different than the approach taken less than a generation ago.  Rather than concentrating all of the efforts on thinking their way into something entirely original, (which, let’s face it, often means saying the same thing every other kid in the class says, but with slightly different words) the approach was to pick and choose from the much more developed ideas that they found on the internet.  These already developed ideas were freely arranged and re-arranged by the student in a manner to best reflect their own opinion on the matter.  At best, the student would color in the missing gaps and mend what had been frayed in the tearing process. 

As I mentioned, this insults the older generations notion of original thinking.  Nevertheless, it’s interesting.  Why waste time reworking what has already been done before.  Instead, we have the opportunity for the first time in history, to access a world of information instantaneously!  And, not just information as in data.  No, much of what is developing on the Internet as we progress towards a more “semantic” Web is data that has already been transformed in to information, or even into knowledge. 

I believe new levels of thinking are going to emerge as we have increasing access to completed knowledge sets (don’t misunderstand me and think that I don’t believe that knowledge is not open to harsh critique and continuous corrections).  As we connect disparate knowledge sets, we will better be able to see the world as whole, and, if we remain humble, the internet indeed might be able to contribute to our collective wisdom!!

This blog doesn’t have a niche focus and I am certainly not an expert in any particular field, but I love to learn and I love to think.  So, I’ve dedicated this space to hold some of my thoughts.  There is so many interesting things out there that sometimes it practically makes me dizzy (I’m not very organized).

Perhaps I’ll even be able to connect a loose thread or two.  Who knows?