Jay Currie, one of the few conservatives I’ve found on the Web who isn’t a complete nutter, had some thoughts on the future of the Internet. I posted a comment there, but as my thinking got out of hand, I’ll repost it here:
I first encountered the term ‘Internet-addled memory’ a few months ago. I’ve already forgotten where. I think this will be a real issue with our children, and have a potentially transformative effect on education. How will you convince children that they have to memorize facts (particularly obscure ones) when they literally have them at their fingertips.
Particularly amongst well-off, well-educated people, conversations and debates will be constantly punctuated by references to handheld devices, or, later on, specialized glasses, or, later still, Internet access points embedded in their optic nerves.
Obviously, this already happens online. I’ve been a member of the Vancouver Canucks USENET group for nearly a decade. Over the years, debates have increasingly become riddled with statistics and quotes. Why? Because the Web has made it possible.
Generally, many trends that begin online end up in the real world. Take ‘texting’–an enormous phenonmenon among the youth of Europe and a growing one here. It’s just IRC on your mobile phone, but it started online. Smart mobs, the real-world conglomeration of people with a common interest, is obviously reflected in Internet forums and newsgroups.
Each generation is exponentially more visually-literate than the last. We are the last generation who will be told ‘not to waste the film in the camera’. Digital cameras, phone cams, digital video–they all empower people to make and manipulate images. What would Renoir make of a Fark Photoshop contest? The Internet (and associated technologies) has done for the painter and the photographer what movable type did for the writer–made it a popularist art form.
I have no doubt that my 9-month-old nephew will, in 15 years, be able to produce a film that convincingly stars him and his friends anywhere, at anytime. And he’ll distribute instantly, to everybody, on the Web (or whatever they call it).
But back to the original question: When facts are free and instantly accessable, what and how do you teach kids? How do you impart the value of knowledge in you mind? I’ve got no idea, because I think that value is declining.
Incidentally, the title is a play on Bill Joy’s controversial and compelling Wired article.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
The thing is that memorization is not that valuable in itself. How many kids grew up ‘learning’ the multiplication tables? How many of them were doing the math in their heads – and how many (like me) were just memorizing the list of 12 or so multiples by cadence and phonetics. The better skill to promote, and I believe this applies to a pre-internet world as much as one where the net is ubiquitous, is to know *how to find information again*. Just as important is how to digest the information you find, and how to judge what is true and what is suspect.
I must say I agree with Todd. No longer should the skill of memorizing facts from teachers and regurgitating them be considered the “right way” to learn. I think it’s much more important to teach critical thinking skills to younger audiences. They clearly know where to find the information – now let’s teach them how to corroborate it and sort credible sources from the bogus ones, and come to their own well-thought conclusions.
Yeah.
What Todd and Jen said.
🙂
My comments were getting somewhat long so I cut & pasted them to my own blog:
http://www.justsue.ca/mtarchives/000505.html
I also agree that it’s not so important to memorize statistics and dates and such in your head, but it is important to know how to find and interpret that data. And it’s a good thing to be empowered to argue, or rebut an argument, using hard facts rather than mere rhetoric. I’m constantly finding myself in situations where I know there’s a statistic that I read somewhere that supports my argument, but I can’t remember the exact numbers.