Humans lack the education to understand modern, high-tech media

[quest7]

In recent years there have been a spate of stories about the impact of the internet, high-tech gizmos, and the orgiastic deluge of multimedia on our brains. Basically, the human brain is an incredibly-flexible, ever-malleable tool that can alter its capabilities depending on your lifestyle. Someone who does a lot of physical work might have a larger parietal lobe, while a philosopher or writer might literally have a bulging frontal lobe. If you use the internet a lot

 

[Swizz]

I was very critical of the story until:

This observation also neatly explains why a lot of people, when challenged on a topic they feel passionately about, resort to throwing around meaningless phrases like “fanboy” in the hope that their lack of critical reasoning ability won’t be noticed.

Yeah, the education system needs reforming; that's all fine and dandy. But in the interim, it's on the shoulders of the readers of that article to educate others on technology so they don't become prey? 98.9% of the readers fall into the above quote, it's seen here every damn day.

 

[novox77]

Even before the Internet, Jay Leno proved that there are some pretty dumb people walking around the streets. And it goes back farther than Leno's street interviews:

Back in the 50s when Candid Camera was all the rage, they set up the hidden camera in a department store and placed a bunch of 150% off signs around the merchandise. Then they asked shoppers what they'd end up paying for something that had a full price of $10. Only 1 out of 10 people realized that the store would have to give the shopper $5.

The sad truth is that the vast majority of the population is under-educated, and no matter what media they are exposed to during their lifetimes, they won't have those critical thinking skills to accomplish anything outside of daily life's menial tasks.