why arnt people smarter die to technological advances

[Blanquist]

i would think that with the internet and instant communication people would be smarter but i dont think the average person is any smarter than a person from the 1960's/

why is that?

[Tim Cornelis]

I recall reading somewhere how the widespread availability of information can lead to the opposite effect due to the widesrpead availability of disinformation. There was a specific name or phrase for this but I can't remember it.

Basically it entailed that information is so easily accesible that people all of a sudden become self-assumed "experts" on things like health, and will believe much on the internet when it's written in an authoritative manner. For example, when you make a documentary about how 9/11 was a conspiracy and use false physics to back up your claims, then the average person will not grasp that the physics are flawed, but assume it is correct because it sounds correct. And will consequently repeat it.

(note I'm not making any specific claim that flawed physics was used in a documentary, it was just an example).

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

The majority of the internet is flashing pictures, porn and gossip. Why would that create a smarter population?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Watch the movie "Stupidity".

[TheGodlessUtopian]

It can be used to create smart people but like all rewarding things in life that would mean effort on the individual's part and in this day and age that simply just doesn't seem to fly anymore.

[Ocean Seal]

Holy shit people. The internet hasn't made people dumber or much like tv didn't make people dumber during its inception.
Here's why they aren't smarter. Because intelligence is very hard to define and very subjective. Its a vague and useless thing to talk about.

[Sea]

More information available? People have definitely gotten more knowledgeable because of that. Literacy rates have been going up. The relevance of religion has been going down, albeit slowly.

Not more intelligent though.

With free access to knowledge you can become more learned. You can learn facts and information and new ways of looking at life.

You can't learn intelligence though, except indirectly through more mental stimulation. Use it or lose it applies to brains too. We've become more knowing, not necessarily smarter.

[electrostal]

I don't know.
For example, thanks to the Internet you can argue about stuff you don't really understand or know jack shit about. See this forum for example. In the old times you HAD to actually read something and risked IRL ridicule for saying dumb things on , say, party meetings and so on.
Now...

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

By smarter I'm assuming the op meant politically informed, not actual intelligence.

[Sea]

By smarter I'm assuming the op meant politically informed, not actual intelligence.According to Rasmussen 11% of Americans support communism of some sort or another, and more than 1/3 say the US is crony-capialist. More than half support legalizing grass and gay marriage. A good chunk of 'murricans also say neither major party represents them.

mileage may vary, results not typical, take with a grain of salt, etc.

[Vorchev]

When information flow is cheap, people spew bad information cheaply.

[Lynx]

Greater access to misinformation and not enough time to sort it out.

[magicme]

It's only in the last ten years or so that the internet's got going. It shows I'm getting old but when I was seventeen a comrade had to spend outrageous sums of money, borrow a copy from a comrade who'd probs complain about the time it was taking to come back or run very fast from Waterstones if he wanted to read Capital. Now it's just there for us in pdf to read for free. Like that's just an example - free music and books, who'd have thought it in the 90s? To be sure, this is a golden age beginning.

It's anectdotal but I've become a lot better at practical electrics all through internet tuition that cost nothing. I've read some communist stuff too and i intend to read more. I think the internet's making me smarter :)

Instant messaging and such are useful tools in the revolutionary struggle. It's more difficult for the gendarmes to hide their true face from the masses when people can video them and upload to the net.

So I'm hopeful that the new technology, as it gets even better and its effects become more pronounced, will cause a rise in class conciousness and better the lives of workers around the world.

Of course much of what's on the internet is a proper waste of time and energy and people I don't approve of use it to do stuff I don't like but still, the new tech is a big win for everyone.

[Psy]

I recall reading somewhere how the widespread availability of information can lead to the opposite effect due to the widesrpead availability of disinformation. There was a specific name or phrase for this but I can't remember it.

Basically it entailed that information is so easily accesible that people all of a sudden become self-assumed "experts" on things like health, and will believe much on the internet when it's written in an authoritative manner. For example, when you make a documentary about how 9/11 was a conspiracy and use false physics to back up your claims, then the average person will not grasp that the physics are flawed, but assume it is correct because it sounds correct. And will consequently repeat it.

(note I'm not making any specific claim that flawed physics was used in a documentary, it was just an example).
Yet the people claiming the moon landing was a hoax is facing for worse criticism now thanks to the internet as now they have to deal with a flood of evidence disproving their claims that is just as accessible as their pseud-science documentaries, were all their claims have toughly debunked with information and modern computer tools that simply didn't exist when the theory that the moon landing were faked first became popular in the 1970's. I mean these days you can fire up a space flight simulator and test some of their "theories" for yourself and see how wrong they are.

9/11 is a bit different, NASA created a mountain of evidence with the Apollo missions as did the USSR through KGB spies in NASA and while they tracked the Apollo missions through space, plus modern pictures of the moon yet with 9/11 we have far less evidence to work as science can't come to a conclusive answer and mostly skeptics for 9/11 use Hanlon's razor (never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity) that while the government could have stood down and let 9/11 happen, a simpler expiation is the US military is just totally incompetent and their reaction to 9/11 was just one big SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up).