The British Public is wrong about almost everything

[underbank]

Given that we are supposed to be in an age of information, it's ironic that the general public seem to be less properly informed than ever! Never has access to information been so readily available via the internet, but for some reason, people just aren't interested. I think it's a travesty. When I think back to my school days, I was constantly thwarted for homework because all I had was my school text books (couldn't afford any others and we lived in a village with a very limited library). Nowadays, even with supposedly better schooling and education, there's no hunger for information anymore. I wonder if it's because it's too readily available and there's been a reduction in general knowledge - i.e. people only look for exactly what they want at the time they want it, so they never get to learn anything they don't think they need to know.

 

[jon0844]

The Internet is full of real facts and good advice, with some sites offering advice from experts in any field that give up time to communicate with those who are interested, for free.

Quora was once seen as the next big thing, and I think most people have forgotten all about it, but if you check it out - there are still a lot of people using it. It's a great way to find out things from the horse's mouth.

But people are probably too lazy to do that.

Even Wikipedia is usually pretty accurate, or gives you the tools to do further searches.

And it's not helped when someone who is lazy will hear something, then Tweet it - which gets re-tweeted and/or someone puts it on a website that is set up purely to cash in on conspiracy theories or is just there to attack a company/person that the author doesn't like.

You can't stop people doing this, but you could try and educate people to understand (and this includes people trying to become journalists without any training or awareness of basic rules on law and ethics) how to question things and not believe everything they read or hear, or that people have motives and agendas.

But, likewise, people need to understand that everything in life isn't one big conspiracy either.. and that you don't just automatically dismiss what a Government might say because a mate in the pub knows the 'real truth' that the 'sheeple' don't know - as if we're all living in The Matrix.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Given that we are supposed to be in an age of information, it's ironic that the general public seem to be less properly informed than ever!

I still believe the rush for all things offered online has had a detrimental effect on the reading of books amongst our younger members of society. As
someone who has attained the ripe old age of 68, I would like to state that I was an avid reader from a very early age and obtained much personal pleasure from this. Does anyone feel that the average reading age of young children has decreased or increased since the availability of the internet ?

I now await being accused of being retrograde in my current thinking but would offer up one fact that when local authorities look to make cutbacks in the local services they offer, it is noticeable that libraries are now looked at as a prime contender for such cuts.

 

[jon0844]

You're totally right. We rely too much on technology (and I'm as guilty as the next man) and many people don't know what to do if it fails.

I no longer have a map in our car. I'll use SatNav most of the time, but what if the battery dies or it crashes? Sure, I still know how to use road signs and have a compass on the rear view mirror so I doubt I'd ever get too lost, but it's an issue.

I don't print out emails often, I expect to pull out my smartphone and bring it up on screen. Dead battery, broken phone? Oops.

Another problem is that you might once have read to learn new things, but now I'll probably Google/Wikipedia search something to find out about something I've heard about. Very rarely will I just look through Wikipedia to read and learn about something random, as I did as a child looking through encyclopedias.

And when I read news, I'd have read a paper and looked through finding interesting stories. Now people online will go for stories about something they're interested in, or even just search every site to see what it says about a particular incident or product. Skipping everything else in the process.

Another thing I do, and wish I didn't, is take loads of photos and videos so I can keep 'memories' for life - but I often feel like I am missing the actual moment, relying on the memory staying in my head instead of stored on Dropbox or something.

I am not even sure if knowing that things aren't really for the better, yet doing it anyway, is a good thing - but perhaps it's slightly better than not even realising.

 

[Flamingo]

Reading the foreword to one of Terry Pratchetts books recently, his collaborator (who's name escapes me) said that he was looking back over records, and his old-fashioned card index was as accessible as ever, but he had a real struggle to read his (then state of the art) computer database from the 90's.

And of course, the storage of the 1986 "Doomsday Project" on laser disks did not make it "accessable for generations" as planned, either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

 

[bnm]

Reading the foreword to one of Terry Pratchetts books recently, his collaborator (who's name escapes me) said that he was looking back over records, and his old-fashioned card index was as accessible as ever, but he had a real struggle to read his (then state of the art) computer database from the 90's.

That'd be Stephen Briggs. The internet and the wealth of information it provides allowed me to check and confirm that.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

If my internet connection goes down or I just feel the need to do something different for a change, my study is absolutely crammed with railway books to read that I have bought from the mid 1950's to the three that I have purchased this month from Triangle Publishing.