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Magazine - Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Magazine - Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Illustration by Guy Billout "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I can feel it, too. I think I know what’s going on. For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. I’m not the only one. Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. Also see:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

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36 questions to get to know yourself better - imperfections and all. 36 questions to get to know yourself better Earlier this year The New York Times published a list of 36 questions written by psychologist Arthur Aron that new couples or acquaintances can ask each other if they want to fast-track their relationship (or break up, depending on what’s revealed). We wanted to create a similar questionnaire but have the focus be on self-discovery, so we turned to two psychologists who specialize in studying the self: Gary Lewandowski, Ph.D., a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey, and Brent Mattingly, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. They created the questions based on psychological theories and research. The professors recommend that you consider each question carefully and write down your answers to get the most out of the quiz.

Jeffrey Kluger: Why China's Moon Mission Is a Good Thing Nobody gets to the moon by accident. If you’re a rocket scientist and know what you’re doing, Earth’s little sister ought not be such a challenging target. It’s huge — a whopping 2,155 mi. (3,468 km) across. It’s close — a mere 239,000 mi. (385,000 km) from Earthly launch pads. And if you take an as-the-crow-flies route, you can get there in just three days. That’s a walk to the 7-11 in a cosmos in which distances are measured in billions of light years. Hobby Lobby and contraception: How conservative evangelicals went from not caring about abortion and birth control to being obsessed with them. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images In its challenge to the “contraception mandate” of the Affordable Care Act, Hobby Lobby claims that certain forms of birth control—Plan B, “ella,” and IUDs—induce abortion and therefore go against the owners’ religious beliefs. The government’s response is that none of these contraceptives ends a pregnancy. Rather, they prevent implantation in the uterine lining. Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.

What games have to teach us about learning: an interview with James Paul Gee James Paul Gee is one of the primary proponents for games in education. Originally a theoretical linguist, he has become a literacy educator, emphasising the important aspects of learning in game playing. He wrote What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and will be presenting at next week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Gamesblog caught up with him before the event to talk games and education. Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to. “I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University. But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.

23 Ways To Treat Yo' Self Without Buying Or Eating Anything - Yes and Yes Here are some ‘treats’ that I regularly give myself because I ‘deserve’ them: * An entire block of Parmesan. Not on something, mind you. Amanda Lindhout, Writer of The House in the Sky, Shares the Story of Her Terrifying Kidnapping in Somalia - Magazine Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, September 2013 Kidnapped in Somalia, Amanda Lindhout spent fifteen months in terrifying captivity. Only after meeting journalist Sara Corbett did she feel ready to tell her story. Every life is made up of a series of decisions—good ones, bad ones, opportunities of a lifetime, and those, in retrospect, that look extraordinarily ill considered.

Where Good Grows - Recycle WGG Use Terms These Use Terms form part of the Service’s Terms and incorporate WGG’s General Terms by reference. This means that the General Terms supplement these Use Terms and you are bound by them as part of your contract with WGG. Watch Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century Online Aired: 02/13/201105:50Expires: 02/13/2015 Rating: NR James Paul Gee, Professor of Literacy Studies in the Department of English at Arizona State University, discusses how complex gaming environments can enrich problem-solving and drive innovation. Extended Interview: Dr. Age of Distraction: Why It’s Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus Digital classroom tools like computers, tablets and smartphones offer exciting opportunities to deepen learning through creativity, collaboration and connection, but those very devices can also be distracting to students. Similarly, parents complain that when students are required to complete homework assignments online, it’s a challenge for students to remain on task. The ubiquity of digital technology in all realms of life isn’t going away, but if students don’t learn how to concentrate and shut out distractions, research shows they’ll have a much harder time succeeding in almost every area. “The real message is because attention is under siege more than it has ever been in human history, we have more distractions than ever before, we have to be more focused on cultivating the skills of attention,” said Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence and other books about social and emotional learning on KQED’s Forum program.

Imagining your future projects is holding you back. Do you have a big creative project in store? Do you lie awake sometimes, thinking about what might go into it, what the characters or environment might look like, how it will touch the audience in a whole new way? Do you imagine what it will feel like to have this project under your belt, and what kind of effect it will have on your life? Let me tell you about Forest Lords. Forest Lords is a series of ten fantasy novels, each a 1000-page brick, about the epic adventures of Greenleaf Barksley, elf proletarian, and his journeys to attain the Golden Leaf and save his homeland from the scourge of the Curse of the Titaness Denox. The thing is, none of this series exists—not even Forest Lords Volume One: The Elven Soul. The Global Dominance of ESPN - Derek Thompson Josue Evilla “This is the chart I was talking about. This is powerful.” Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s director of research, is hunched over an iPad in a wood-paneled conference room at the network’s New York City headquarters, on West 66th Street, swooshing through the slides of a presentation he’s prepared annually since 1998. Every year, in the second week of September, the company asks hundreds of random subjects for three “must have” TV networks.

That’s Zef: The True Story Behind Die Antwoord’s Mysterious Style Does zef exist? Or did Yolandis and Ninja of Die Antwoord make it all up in a frenzied (and successful) bid to capture international attention a year ago? Does it even matter now? Writing Memos Summary: This handout will help you solve your memo-writing problems by discussing what a memo is, describing the parts of memos, and providing examples and explanations that will make your memos more effective. Contributors:Courtnay Perkins, Allen BrizeeLast Edited: 2013-03-10 11:49:14 Memos have a twofold purpose: they bring attention to problems and they solve problems. They accomplish their goals by informing the reader about new information like policy changes, price increases, or by persuading the reader to take an action, such as attend a meeting, or change a current production procedure.

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