With technology giving us easy access to information nowadays, we can learn as much as we want whenever and wherever we are as long as we have data in our gadgets. How amazing our world kept revolving from how it used to be during the time of our predecessors when they had to travel miles away from their homes to libraries seeking knowledge.
This era is different; whatever information that interests us can easily be gotten; however, does that make us more knowledgeable, intelligent, or smarter than our predecessors? In this post, I will share my thoughts about this subject matter...
Easy access to knowledge I can say it is a blessing, and the blessing is the ease of accessibility. Whenever we need any information, such information can be gotten through the Internet and via our gadgets; also, we get access to such information quicker and faster, right? . However, it's also a curse, and the curse part is that the information we get as such sometimes is not complete or is not completely true. Sometimes, it's just people's opinion we are getting and not the scientific fact. There is a mix-up of information over one subject matter, which in some cases has led people to misinformation. So it now starts creating false information and other things that can stem from it.
So the easy access to knowledge we enjoy in this era doesn't really make us more knowledgeable, and the reason is because we get information faster but NOT DEEPER! If I need research on something, I just go to Google, and it's easy for me to just get all the cheap information posted over there and at ease even from the comfort of my bed. No form of critical thinking, no stress, no effort, and in some cases, the ease of access to information we enjoy could even hinder true memorization, unlike our predecessors who took their time working on a particular access to acquiring such knowledge.
It's different from when we go to the library and consult a book written by somebody or articles someone has written about his findings and all that, and then do something like a meta-analysis, bringing in a lot of articles written about the book and drawing inferences. You see, it's not like we are more knowledgeable; we just have ease of accessibility.
It doesn't also give us an edge to be smarter than our predecessors. If you look at it holistically, the things we do with commitments, time, and investment yield a better result than the haphazard information we access on the Internet.
Wrapping up, easy access to information is a blessing as well as a curse. It makes us get information faster but not necessarily deeper, and thirdly, we are not smarter than our predecessors.
My thought is that the easy access to information or education we have today does not necessarily make us more knowledgeable as compared to our predecessors that had to source information and get a lot of inferences from authors and researchers. Even though it was tedious for them back then, they had better depth of knowledge of a lot of the things they were exposed to, unlike us with the fast and easy access to knowledge but without the guarantee that we are learning more effectively and thinking more critically.
This is my response to the #hivelearners community contest on the topic titled, Is Easy Access A Blessing?
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I completely agree with your views about the dangers of getting dumb answers to questions. Due to misinterpreting opinions as facts.
So when I started with Wikipedia, I soon realised that I should only use it to find references to original sources of information. And even those need to be carefully checked.
Later, when I was researching medical information, I discovered PubMed. Which led me to look for peer-reviewed journals for reliable information about other subjects. These days, there are many services that help you compile scientific research. At the moment, I can only recall ResearchGate. But it is worth spending time trying out different services to see which are most suitable for you.
Of course, much of this research is behind paywalls. Though there are often ways around paying for journals. In particular, I found that when I created relationships on scientific social media, several researchers were willing to share articles with me.
I agree that fast access to search engine results can make us seem less knowledgeable than our predecessors. But these days, we have much better access to vast libraries of professional research. So we certainly have the opportunity to be smarter. With the final caveat that even the best research is only enough until someone finds something better.
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Yea...we do have the opportunity to be smarter if only we go deeper into acquiring knowledge and not relying on some information we see online. The question is, how many people in our era are willing to gather many research work before making conclusions? We have the access but maybe we are more relaxed with the shallow knowledge
I shouldn't generalize it anyway...some people are doing great with knowledge and research nowadays
I appreciate your warm feedback 🤗
So would you rather go to the lab to perform a test before you'd say it's correct? Because back in the days, that's what they did.
For instance ,some people are given a textbook to copy the answers to their answers sheet, but they still end up writing the wrong answer while some are given that same workbook and they read, and think before they write the answer and pass the course. Knowledge at our fingertips isn't a curse at all, rather it's a blessing.
The Internet has made it so easy for us that we could learn any skill we want and get any information we want. Now it all depends on you if you want to go deeper into the subject or just learn the shallow parts of it and move on. The Internet has everything you need.
Another thing is knowing the right source. they're textbooks online too you can use, not all have wrong informations on them.
I'm not saying we're smarter than the other Gen, all I'm trying to say is that we're at a higher advantage and people have been breaking records. I bet the man who made the first computer would be impressed with how far technology has gone.
People are breaking records.
I understand that we have the opportunity to be smarter but how many people are putting effort into seeking true knowledge? How many percentage of people in our era today? The ease of access to knowledge we enjoy today is a blessing with it's downside...we are lazy to research more on certain issues
I have practical experience to this my dear...if only we shouldn't relent on the shallow knowledge we receive sometimes...we should be far better smarter than the old
Can't forget in a hurry an experience we had while I was in school, this guy was always reading from the internet and he was asked a question, he was just quoting figures from the internet unknown to him that those figures were worldwide figures whereas he was been asked for Nigerian's figure, our lecturer just said, Online doctor after his whole answers... In that same way, people often get misled from the information they see on the internet forgetting that some of those information are from people that aren't even masters of those fields
Beautiful post as always
How best you described or better say u summarized my grammar here 😃
Online doctor indeed.. lolz
Everyone wants short cut but we know the better source of knowledge anyways
That's True
I think I am not clear on what to say about the topic because I need to consider many things before I share my opinions. But at some point, I agree with you. We get easy access but it's also true that it gives us deeper knowledge unless we make efforts.
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Yea... without extra effort..the easy access to knowledge we have sometimes can be shallow knowledge
However, depending on the knowledge we seek, some people go deeper into making further research from different sources online but how many people do that?
Yeah, we can't get knowledge deep. We need to learn what we get in a creative mood. Easy knowledge is luxury but it is not in a mood to facilitate us.
It has the capacity to make us lazy but with exceptions anyways
I totally agree with you on this. I’ve had to do some research and it was only when I entered the library to read those old books I was finally able to get what I was looking for .
Information online is good, but it’s accuracy is not always assured.
Exactly my dear.... depending on it at all times may not be too healthy for true knowledge seekers
Thanks for visiting 🥰
Let those with ears listen.
Hahaha 😂
I too agree with this. I think its more of a curse than a blessing
Lolz 😆
We shouldn't allow it to continue this way though
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