Is the internet, not formal education, the new great equalizer?

Internet won't do shit. Americans are dumber than ever with information freely available like never before. It used to be people were dumb because they had to work all the time or couldn't afford books of elementary school. Now they are dumb because school is boring.

The amount of knowledge on the internet is astounding. Instead people play farmvile. But it is always someone elses fault.

haha are you always this pessimistic Ant?

Yes, internet is the great equalizer; globally anyways.

As much as I despise ANT, he's right that Americans are toast.

You're not allowed to say that, you Canadian... only Americans can talk shit about the US.

And believe me, we loooooooooooooooooooooooooove to.

The internet's what you make of it. I spend most of my time on the internet on this site trying to find the little pearls of wisdom that can help me break into a job on the Street. Others prefer break.com (I check it out occasionally). I do love how easy it is to find out about pretty much anything with a simple google search.

There was a guy on the Colbert Report talking about how the internet may have too much information, meaning that a lot of it is unreliable... That and people are becoming "too good" at multitasking (looking from topic to topic) that they're not really studying anything too in depth. That's just his observations with the average person though.

All depends on the person. I actually like to find new things and learn about them. I go to the internet for most of my random daily questions actually.

But I'm sure some people would rather look up baby videos on youtube or play frontierville all day long.

For most of americans, the latter is true.

If anything, the internet has made and will continue to make people a lot dumber. From the obvious omg lulz brb gt2 mah bff 4 lyfe illiteracy, to the overabundance of highly specious materials which often find their way to the front page of google via s.e.o. techniques; it is a den of misinformation. Now, I am happy to admit that a ton of useful information is available. Easily more so that at any time in human history. The notion that this useful information, however, is easily and adequately accessible is patently false and misleading.

I have no way of quantifying it, but I can say with confidence that since people started using random links to back up their arguments, wikipedia as the rubber stamp of reality and blogs/snippets as their primary news source, the world has taken a giant intellectual step backwards. As all living organisms die out when they are not challenged, so does the human brain become lethargic and impotent when not challenged by materials written beyond the junior high school reading level.

Props to those who use it to it's full potential, but for the overwhelming majority, the internet has done little but sink them further into their tunnel vision views and strengthen the forearm of their primary stroke hand.

one obvious bad thing about the internet is it has given Über-trolls like blastoise a much louder voice, haha :)

There is an opportunity for it to be "the new great equalizer" but in practice....

A few years ago I was reading about some organization donating handcrank powered laptops that had wi-fi. They would deploy them in like somewhere in Africa and had a van that would drive around that had a wi-fi signal. Now that shit to me is an equalizer as something super basic as learning about improved farming techniques could completely change lives in that situation. Over here, we have Youtube comments.

Given that the United States is Canada's biggest trading partner, if America is fcked then Canada is equally fcked.

I think one of the problems with Wikipedia is that you're so easily to access baseline information, it's very easy to feel like you've "learned" when you have just looked up like ten random fun facts for the day. The way that information has been traditionally delivered via the internet does not lead people to learn anything in depth.

Well the definition of knowledge/learning, what is time efficient for us to learn/retain, and what we apply in the real world is evolving rapidly. Now when you can look up basically the fact of anything at an instant on your phone dates quite a bit of current pedagogy / parental teaching.

I feel sorry for any kids whose parents are still pushing/whipping them to go win that spelling bee, and if they don't win they're a failure.

It's not how much information you know at hand necessarily, its knowing how to access the right (and accurate) information quickly and use it correctly.

Try again after you see University of Phoenix grad landing a job at Goldman Sachs IBD.

In my opinion, the internet is most useful to someone with a base level of intelligence and education. Otherwise, it tends to be a place for morons to find other like-minded morons and perpetuate falsehoods and stupidity.

For people with a decent base level of education, however, it's far beyond the great equalizer.

Yes.

Traditional higher education (i.e. Universities, especially private ones) are profit-driven, largely ineffective, bureaucracies. If you can't afford it, you can't get in. (keep in mind, getting a student loan is not the same thing as "affording it' and many can't even get loans).

This doesn't mean that most people are going to spend their hours on the internet learning. But, the option is there, to anyone with internet access. I'm confident that a HIGHLY dedicated and industrious person could learn the equivalent of a Wharton degree in Finance purely off the internet (just the academics, of course). Maybe they'd have to pay for a couple online textbooks, but maybe they wouldn't have to pay a thing but their internet/electricity bill. I know some of you will fervently disagree, but that's my opinion and I think it's a good one.

*FYI, I'm not bashing Wharton. Just saying, and you know it's probably true.

Expensive schools essentially = High paid professors making poor power point slides and teaching out of a textbook.

Say I pay $2500/credit hour and $200 for a textbook. Yet, it's likely I will learn 85% of the material from the textbook. So, about 92.5% of the cost for 15% of the learning.

Video on Bill Gate's opinion of in person vs. online education. I firmly believe that you can learn any academic subject on the internet to the same degree as you can in a university lecture. My brother who just graduate medical school would never go to his first year lectures, because they were posted on line, and he would watch them at his leisure. He did very well.

I did the same thing for undergrad, but my professor wouldn't video his lectures, so I would read the text book, and watch free on line tutorials on how to solve related questions.

Although, you do not get the same motivation and drive to learn on your own, one major reason being that despite possibly having the same academic knowledge, you will not have a degree in your hand, which is what pays the bills.