Imagining life without immediate access to information is a difficult task for anyone younger than about 25 years old. As college students today we’re often told harrowing stories about how in the “old days” you had to spend hours in the library pouring through actual books just to write a single research paper. For us, “research” consists of logging on to a library database and typing in keywords to find relevant articles. This technology has had profound effects on the culture of our generation, most specifically our understanding and application of knowledge and information.
In philosophy, knowledge is often broken up into three conditions that are required for someone to know something. These conditions include belief, truth, and justification. A person must believe a statement is true; the statement must be in fact true, and finally, the person is justified in believing the statement to be true. Thus, knowledge involves attaining the three conditions through either experience or education. Knowledge is not synonymous with information, which is defined as “facts provided or learned about something or someone.” In our online society however, where information can be accessed immediately anywhere at any time, our generation often treats these two institutions as the same thing.
Information provides the basis for two of the three conditions for knowledge, including truth and justification. The internet is simply a vehicle for instant access to these conditions, and therefore can be a channel by which knowledge spreads rapidly.
How do you see that our generation treats information and knowledge online? I plan to continue this thread and add more opinions as I get feedback.
Posted by Victoria Oestreich
3 comments:
You bring up a lot of interesting points. The thing that immediately comes to mind is what a bio teacher of mine repeatedly told. He said that memorizing is not enough, understanding is how true knowledge is gained.
I think that speaks a lot to the information that is just IN OUR FACE all the time. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that just will spout information without really putting some thought as to what they're "learning." Knowledge is more than facts. It's truths, beliefs, perspectives, understanding of concepts, judgments, methodologies, etc. If I just memorize dates in a past war for example, without understanding the social/political implications, then the true knowledge I would gain would be very shallow.
The unfortunate thing about today's society is it is so fast. We are a society of instant gratification, so we want to get everything done exceedingly fast so we can do it all. This can lead to memorizatoin or spouting of what we find on the internet versus actually learning the material we gain access to.
There was some credibility to having to go out in the 'old days' to research; more is learned in the actual process of researching than in writing the paper or doing the test itself. Information has a longer impression if more time is spent with it.
Do have the time to learn anymore?
There is definitely something to be said about the manner in which students treat information found online. How do you propose one finds belief in the information? Even in searching through books for information, one can find the first hint of association to one's proposed subject matter and decide one's search has ended.
Alternatively, one should know that the first Google search result isn't the end of the search for knowledge in the subject matter. How is one conditioned to keep searching for that justification, that belief?
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