This article is about how to use the internet. Don't expect to learn any technical details though. There are plenty of classes and tutorials for that, and if you happen to have teenager handy, he or she can usually help quite a bit with the technical stuff. We are going to talk about the right way to use the internet. The internet is a tool, but it is almost a living, breathing tool. If you are not careful, you will find that the internet is using you.
Searchable Long Term Memory
Perhaps the internet's most valuable function is as a collective, searchable, long term memory. The internet is sort of becoming a collective memory for the human race, or at least for the tiny portion of the human race living in 1st world countries that are rich enough for the majority to have internet access and free enough not to censor things that are inconvenient to their governments.
As a collective, searchable, long term memory, the internet is pretty great. Unfortunately, research has suggested that such easy access to information is making people stupider. In the past, the search for information often brought up related information that would help the searcher understand the context of the desired information better. This had several effects. One was that people that needed to find information often came away with a better understanding of the subject. Another was that this better understanding of the subject often made subsequent lookups less necessary. In short, slower research methods that result in learning context actually improve the researcher's ability to do the task. Evidently, most internet users don't do this. Search engines and good data organization make it trivial to find only the precise answer to the question asked. The results of this are that people don't learn the context, and thus may have trouble correctly using the information gained. The bigger problem is that many of the benefits of research are lost. Yes, this information finding tactic may save some time in the short run, but it also deliberately avoids opportunities to make ourselves smarter, which can cost us in the long run.
This problem is not the internet's fault though, and it is not even the fault of content providers. It is our own fault. We are allowing the ease of use of the internet to make us stupider by using it as an excuse to be lazy. This is the wrong way to use the internet, and you would be better off stuck in a library full of books if this is how you choose to use the internet.
The take away here is, don't be lazy. The internet is an enormous and awesome learning resource, and the potential for becoming smarter and more knowledgeable is far greater today than it has ever been in the history of the human race. When you need to find some small piece of information on the internet, instead of only taking that one small bit you need, read around it, so you get some context and understand the application better. This is the right way to use the internet.
Reference Book
As a collective memory, the internet is very much like an encyclopedia. Unlike paper encyclopedias, however, the internet does not give you the learning experience of finding other interesting articles while you are looking up what you need. In some ways this is very convenient. In others though, it is not. It is generally easy to find information quickly, but you ultimately learn far less. In my opinion, half of the fun of looking something up in a paper encyclopedia is learning all of the other interesting things during the search. The internet works the other way around. You generally find the information you are looking up first. If that is where you stop, you are completely missing out on learning something new and interesting.
If you miss the valuable learning during your search for information, then you are using the internet wrong. On the internet, the additional information comes after the desired information is found. As you read through the information you needed (instead of just taking the bit that you need and remaining ignorant), you will likely find terms that you don't know or that are otherwise interesting. If those terms are also links, open them in new tabs. Otherwise, open new tabs to search for them. Then, go back to the tab with the information you needed. When you are done with the information you needed, you can go back and learn tons of new stuff.
The take away for this one is, you don't have to walk away once you have what you want. If you find something else interesting, open a new tab for it and come back to it later. This leverages the fast information finding of the internet to stay on topic until you are done, but it also provides you with the opportunity to enrich yourself. This is the right way to use the internet.
The Internet is a Collective Tool
The internet is a tool, but it is not just your tool, and not everyone chooses to use it ethically. This is especially bad in the social media industry, but it is something you should expect from pretty much any for-profit company with an internet presence.
How much time do you spend on Facebook? What about Twitter? Even email can be problematic for some people. The fact is, the internet is not just a tool for you. It is a tool for for-profit businesses as well, and they will leverage the internet in any way possible to get your money. If they cannot do that, then they will settle for your time. Most social media sites get paid for your time spent on their site. This typically happens through ads or data (yes, behavioral data from social networking sites is actually quite valuable, especially when it comes to advertising). As such, these sites have a strong financial motivation to do everything in their power to maximize the time you spend on their sites.
Social media sites are probably the biggest offender here, and it is probably because it is one of the easiest kind of sites to do this. Facebook offers games that require the player to come back to Facebook on a schedule to play the game. If a Facebook game can get you to come back every 2 or 3 hours, and if you spend a few more minutes surfing posts, looking at your friends newly posted pictures, or anything else, Facebook makes money from that, at the expensive if your time. YouTube's (and now, most other video sites) autoplay feature is not offering you a new video because it thinks you will like it. It does pick videos that your watching history indicates you will like, but the purpose of the autoplay feature is to get you spend a few more minutes of your time generating money for YouTube. The list goes on, but even email tends to do this. Does your cell phone notify you every time a new email comes in? Perhaps your email provider wants you to spend a few minutes writing a rely, so it can use the data in your reply to target better ads at you. If you did not get notifications, and forgot to check your email one day, you might not reply to everything in the big list of emails that piles up, which ultimately means you are generating less money for your email provider.
The problem here is time. By itself, offering great services and profiting from their use is fine, especially when all they cost is the time spent using them. If you end up spending far more time than it necessary using these services though, you are essentially overpaying for them, and you are wasting time that could be spent far more productively.
The take away for this one is, make the internet your tool. The internet offers so many great things, but when you spend all of your time letting yourself get worked by other people's tools, you don't actually get much value from the internet. Social media is great, but use it on your terms, instead of the terms the service providers would like you to on. Take control of how you use the internet so that it benefits you, instead of just all of those companies that want to convert your time into their money. This is the right way to use the internet.
The Good and the Bad
No internet primer would be complete without this: The internet is largely unregulated, and this means that anyone can publish anything on the internet, without any oversight. This is not entirely true, but it is mostly true. There are some things that governments don't like to see on the internet, and governments generally have the power to take down offensive sites that are run within their jurisdiction, as well as the power to make internet providers in their jurisdiction block access to these sites outside of their jurisdiction. Yes, this power is abuseable, for example, a certain event that happened in a certain popular square near government buildings in China (if I was more specific, this post would definitely be blocked by Chinese internet providers, by government mandate) is blocked by all Chinese internet providers, because the Chinese government does not want their own people to learn of certain atrocities committed in that location, by that government (it may get blocked anyway...). On the other hand, in the U.S., this is used to block child pornography sites that cannot be shut down by the U.S. government, because these sites are hosted in other countries, where the U.S. government has no power. That said, no one generally blocks web sites that merely tell lies.
The internet should be treated just like any other source of information. If you are not familiar with a web site or its owner, then that web site is a stranger, and any information found on that web site should be treated like information from a stranger. On average, most of the information found on the internet is correct, but "most of" only means "more than 50%." Some sites are more reliable than others, for example, contrary to popular opinion, Wikipedia is one of the most accurate web sites in the world, and some researchers even found that it beats printed encyclopedias, like Encyclopedia Britannica. Either way though, you should definitely confirm that anything you read on the internet is true, before you go around telling people it is. If you find mixed claims, consider that some people with web sites don't check their data first, so they may be repeating incorrect information they got from another site. In fact, this sometimes even happens with professional new agencies!
The take away from this is: Don't believe everything you read. There is no agency that decides what is allowed on the internet and what is not. No one is out there reading everything published on the internet, correcting or removing lies or mistakes. The internet is pretty much a free market. The problem of lies spreading through the internet is so bad, in fact, that there are entire web sites dedicated to finding the truth and revealing lies, rumors, myths, and mistakes for what they are (again though, even these sites are not regulated by any overarching regulatory body). Also, keep in mind that many people don't understand that the internet is often wrong. So, the next time a friend sends a political email saying something outrageous about some Presidental candidate, don't start spreading the information until you have verified that it is true. Obama's birth certificate does not have to be of non-U.S. origin to disagree with his politics, and if you are the one who can politely point out that this is a lie (perhaps followed by an affirmation that your position on his politics has not changed), you will look like the smarter person who actually takes the effort to avoid being wrong. What it comes down to is, the internet is full of great information, but there are also plenty of rumors, mistakes, and lies to be found there. When you learn something new on the internet, take a minute or two to verify that it is correct before spreading the information like it is absolute truth. This is the right way to use the internet.
The internet is perhaps the greatest learning tool ever made, so why is it making us stupider? The answer is that it is not. We are making ourselves stupider, because we are using the internet wrong. If you want to use the internet the right way, the way that will benefit you the most, and the way that will allow you to harness all of its awesome power to become a better, smarter, more productive person, you have to tame the internet, instead of letting it tame you. There may be times where it is appropriate to binge on cat videos, spend hours on Facebook, or watch your inbox like a hawk, answering every email immediately. Most of the time, however, this is not the right way to use the internet. The right way to use the internet is to make a conscious decision of what limits you will place on how the internet is allowed to influence your life and use your time, and then enforce those limits. You can tame the internet, and when you do, it will help you to become so much better. This is the right way to use the internet!
No comments:
Post a Comment