A Learning Enigma in the Information Age

A Learning Enigma in the Information Age

Despite my youth and its coincidence with the advent of social media, online entertainment, and the decisive maturation of the internet as a whole, I have never really been all that excited about these technologies. I have two email accounts that I rarely check, and one Facebook account that I never check. I feel absolutely no connection with the online behaviors of many of my peers: the one hundred and fifty million Ansel Adams of Instagram, the seemingly limitless Benjamin Franklins and Confucian sages of the Twittersphere. I haven’t the slightest clue what Reddit is, and I’ve never even struck up a hearty game of Angry Birds to pass the time. But despite my abstinence from these myriad cyber frontiers, the internet is still a huge part of my life. I marvel at its ubiquity daily, and then I marvel some more at the astonishing implications of this ubiquity. My generation is the first to grow up under the completely novel paradigm of continuous access to the entire wealth of human knowledge, practically free of charge, at our fingertips, anytime, anyplace. The sheer volume of information that I can easily obtain from a device that fits in my pocket is staggering; and in an ideal world, this would be a pure ameliorator, the answer to the wildest dreams of anybody who has ever felt a thirst for knowledge.

But even the most beautiful rose has razor thorns, and the internet’s function as a dynamic, infinite encyclopedia is no exception. Nathanael Enwald of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point asks the most pertinent question (and provides the most eloquent answer) regarding the unintended consequences of this reality: “…does information being so readily available really mean anything good for our intellectual capacity? If anything, the effect it has on our cognitive abilities is problematic. It’s because of the immense amount of data passing through our skulls that our thought processes and attention spans have grown shallow and aphoristic. If we need an answer to a question all we have to do is Google it, answer it, and forget it.”

I completely agree with this powerful statement. I am constantly whipping out my iPhone in order to look up some word that ought to be a concrete part of my vocabulary, but is instead hopelessly stranded somewhere between the back of my throat and the tip of my tongue; or to help myself remember a fact or an anecdote that I had once held dearly before it mysteriously slipped away; or to seek out, with the intention to truly learn, an author’s name, some song lyrics, a useful equation, a set of directions for any sort of process, an address, etc.

And this is exactly where the phenomenon Enwald describes comes into play. Instead of behaving like an incredible tool in these types of situations, the internet tends to function as a self-perpetuating crutch. The ease with which I can access information, along with the comforting knowledge that it will literally always be accessible, severely degrades the quality of my internalization of that information. I tend to easily forget things that I lookup online, simply because the process of retrieving information undermines the value of the information itself. Every time I search for something, the process reveals itself more and more as a devious reward mechanism that takes all of the attention off of learning and retention and transfers it to a fleeting rush of satisfaction, derived from merely having searched and found. And every time I search and find, I’m further tricked into believing in the absolute necessity of such convenience, and I’m further conditioned to fail in any attempts at actually obtaining new knowledge.

Although her ultimate conclusion veers off into completely different territory, columnist Odelia Kaly’s remarks on the detriments of our society’s various advanced technologies still apply to this alarming issue of sacrificing quality for quantity and convenience: “…we’ve become so overambitious in wanting to improve ourselves that we are actually destroying ourselves without noticing. Instead of these devices (which are an incredible display of our intellect and abilities) representing our collective progress and enhancing our quality of life, in the long run they are depleting our quality of life by inhibiting our ability to grow. The technology will burgeon, but we will remain stagnant.” When we allow our technology to trick us like this, we remain stagnant because our intellects remain static. Our intellects remain static because we are only providing ourselves with an illusion of learning, a mirage devoid of all the meaty fillings that real learning must entail. Clicking on a link offers none of the difficulty, none of the struggle, and none of the tedious aspects of learning that make it effective. If I want to actually develop my intellect, or my understanding of a topic, I need to read a book, listen to a teacher, say a prayer, have a conversation with a friend, embark on an introspective journey, or come up with some of my own opinions on the matter. All of these examples are extremely worthwhile, yet often very challenging. But if I am content to remain with just the facade of learning, then all I have to do is search, glaze over whatever I happen to find, and repeat.

Works Cited

Enwald, Nathanael. “Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?” Is the Internet Making Us Stupid? University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.

Kaly, Odelia. “Robot Apocalypse.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 Sept. 2013. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.