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'The Dumbest Generation'
- run4yourlives 18y agoBefore we write the book on the "dumbest" generation, we need to write the one about the "worst generation". That would be the boomers. Nobody has collectively fubared things up as much as they have.
- JimEngland 18y agoI blame the hippies.
- alaskamiller 18y agoHippies had fun, grew up, and now want to make sure none of us enjoy what they had.
- Angostura 18y agoYes, that's exactly the kind of trite understanding of history that the author is worried about. Well done. ... and no, I'm not a boomer.
- run4yourlives 18y agoHow often something is repeated bears little to no relation to how true it may or may not be. Several of the reasons I feel it is correct to nominate boomers for that degrading title are perfectly valid. But feel free to continue ad-hominem if you wish.
- mtts 18y agoPlease provide some of those reasons then. I'm curious. There's a lot of them and they're wealthier than most of us will ever be, but the worst generation?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- orib 18y agoI'm getting tired of these "The Internet Makes Us Dumb" and "People can't read on the internet"... These articles are usually so poorly read that I give up trying to make sense of them. I have no problem reading large, thick books, and will often work through a well written 400 page novel in maybe a day or so. I'll also sit and read through an interesting article on line, when it deals with relevant issues. Maybe people stop reading your articles half way through because they're dull, meaningless luddite whines, and not because they've gotten stupider? Can we stop posting these "damn kids get off my lawn" sort of posts? there are enough real problems with society these days that we don't need to make up crap about how reading online makes us dumb.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoI think the author is talking about the average person, not about you. The Internet makes it very, very easy to tune into something trashy. I'm not sure it's productive to claim that a culture of ignorance is less important than other problems. If you don't fix that, everything else gets worse. If people start to believe that it's important to do an actual job well, not to vote in a giant election or a TV show or a social news site, many problems will disappear.
- orib 18y agoAs I said, there are enough real problems with society that we don't need to make up hogwash about how the internet is us stupider. Real problems, like a broken education system where the intelligent children with a desire to learn are bored to tears, and just stop trying in school, all in the name of bringing up people who can't -- or don't want to -- learn well enough to keep up. Real problems like a culture of unquestioning consumption of both material and nonmaterial items. Real problems like people's apathy towards their environment -- the communities that they are part of, the health of the planet they're living on, et al. I could go on. If anything, tuning into interactive trash is a step or two above what generations have been doing since the 1960s -- tuning into TV, and turning off their minds. I see the current inanity of many parts of the internet as a product of this culture of ignorance that you're speaking of, and not the cause.
- 18y ago
- mattmaroon 18y agoThis article makes the fatal assumption that people's reading and internet usage habits don't mature along with the rest of their personalities. Sure teens might spend all day gossiping on MySpace, and college students trolling Facebook for hookups, but that's not that much different than what both groups have done offline since time immemorial. And just like previous generations they'll grow up, get jobs, have families, and change their habits.
- linkup 18y agoI reviewed the book and had a different take on it: http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2008/06/24/the-dumbest-generation/ http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2008/06/24/the-dumbest-generati...