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June 15, 2010
The new issue of Nieman Reports, the journal of Harvard's Nieman Foundation of Journalism, offers a wide array of perspectives on the future of news in our age of instant information. I've just dipped into the contents, but it looks like there's a lot of interesting stuff here:
Comments
James Paul Gee's article about learning by gaming reminded me of Marc Prensky's "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". Prensky says: instead of sticking to old methodology and content of teaching we have to move on and start teaching people the way they understand things: by gaming, deciding, solving, trying and failing/winning.
Our brains are better at making choices and solving problems than at reading complex texts. It comes as no surprise: making choices and solving problems is often a matter of life and death. Our brains just have to be good at it.
No wonder we love internet: it let's us do what we like to do - trying things, competing, choosing ways.
Thus, I would say that internet is not spoiling our brains. Internet allows our brains to do what our brains like to do: making choices and solving problems. So, *it's not that internet succeeded, it's rather that books failed*. After 500 years our brains are still committed to what is really crucial for human beings.
So, what should we think about is: how to make use of our preferences for action over reasoning, how to exploit it to our benefit, rather than trying to stop it or fight it.
Best regards,
Wojtek -- old-school book-worm
Posted by: Wojtekwalczak.wordpress.com
at June 15, 2010 03:23 PM
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(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)Now in paperback:
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
"Riveting" -San Francisco Chronicle
"Rewarding" -Financial Times
"Revelatory" -Booklist
The Cloud, demystified:
"Future Shock for the web-apps era" -Fast Company
"Ominously prescient" -Kirkus Reviews
"Riveting stuff" -New York Post
Greatest hits
Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians
The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar
Flight of the wingless coffin fly
Other writing
The end of corporate computing
Nick's first book:
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