Ignoring Knowledge
Okay, I've watched videos on YouTube. I have watched cat videos (of course), protest videos, song videos. I've watched documentaries, and snippets of shows. I don't say there aren't interesting things; there are, and many. It's just that it's not all there is.
Sometimes one of my English students will ask what YouTuber I follow. I don't. Then they start rushing names past me. Names that could be taken out of a Málaga phone book for all I recognize them. I shake my head and the student looks incredulous. If I ask what they use internet for besides watching YouTubers and playing games, they will say, to use Google Translate and sometimes the Wikipedia to copy and paste for a school project. Period. Everything else on the net for them might be reachable only through a specialized network of passwords and smoke signals.
And there is so much out there! Almost all information on earth is available on the internet. Yes, some of it only after paying a subscription to enter some pages, such as specialty journals or some newspapers. But even the information in some of those pages can be found elsewhere. You just have to search a little harder. Through this blog, and checking information to try to be correct whenever I talk about something, I have discovered a universe out there greater than the main branch of the Boston Public Library. Once upon a time, to find out information of old news stories, you had to ask for the microfiche or microfilm for a certain period of time, of a certain newspaper, load it in a special viewer, and scroll through all the newspapers on it to find what you were looking for. Now, just type as much information as possible in the search bar and hit enter. Then, stroll down and choose the entries that seem relevant to what you're trying to find. If, after ten minutes and different rewriting of your quest, you don't find what you're looking for, you really are looking for a needle in a haystack of trazillions of bytes. Desist or go to a librarian at a big library who can narrow it down for you.
My husband has a pair of old boots not sold locally that someone who worked on oil rigs sold to him. He really wants a new pair. I looked it up online and found they are made by a company in France that will send me information on where to buy them at the closest store to us. He was surprised. He hadn't thought the information could be so easily found on the net. But the truth is that everything is there to be bought and sold.
Whenever I see an interesting bit of news, I check on it. I try to contrast it by checking different newspapers. Through that, I have found most newspapers in Spain are right of center and will support the government viewpoint in most areas. Even El País, once upon a time a quite objective paper, is now almost as rancid as the farthest right of all. It has changed much from the times I bought its international edition at the newsstand in Harvard Square. The farthest left is Público. That only has an online edition, and is consistently critical with the government, the church, and most of the European establishment, though European in its outlook rather than strictly parochial. Both will offer opposed viewpoints. The middle of both is most likely the closest to the complete truth. With a few clicks of the keyboard, fact checking is much easier (and cheaper) than going out and buying different newspapers.
I have found pages that tell me of recent earthquakes all over the world. I have also found a page, earth.nullschool.net, where I can see the air and ocean conditions on the entire globe, and the prediction for a few days ahead. I can even track airplanes flying over our airspace, and follow information on sunspots and the sun's magnetic storms. I have found all sorts of information! Whenever I have a question, I check the different webpages I've written down like I used to check an encyclopedia once. Most of this information is in English; there is a reason it is the international lingua franca these days. English is not only used between people of different countries when they meet, it is also the language of the internet. But most of my students prefer to rely on Google Translate to do the job, usually badly, for them.
So, those kids that only use internet for fast laughs and obsessive gaming are losing out on the entire encyclopedia of human knowledge. The sad truth is that it's not only kids. Many adults also dip into this wealth only to amuse themselves with the least intelligent humor that pulls an easy laugh out of them. People who don't love reading and all the joy it can bring will not appreciate the knowledge to be found here. It's like the kids who, years ago, used to read National Geographic only to look at the topless pictures of tribal women, instead of reading to learn about the world they lived in. How sad, to have all that information under the tips of your fingers, and not bother to search it out.
Sometimes one of my English students will ask what YouTuber I follow. I don't. Then they start rushing names past me. Names that could be taken out of a Málaga phone book for all I recognize them. I shake my head and the student looks incredulous. If I ask what they use internet for besides watching YouTubers and playing games, they will say, to use Google Translate and sometimes the Wikipedia to copy and paste for a school project. Period. Everything else on the net for them might be reachable only through a specialized network of passwords and smoke signals.
And there is so much out there! Almost all information on earth is available on the internet. Yes, some of it only after paying a subscription to enter some pages, such as specialty journals or some newspapers. But even the information in some of those pages can be found elsewhere. You just have to search a little harder. Through this blog, and checking information to try to be correct whenever I talk about something, I have discovered a universe out there greater than the main branch of the Boston Public Library. Once upon a time, to find out information of old news stories, you had to ask for the microfiche or microfilm for a certain period of time, of a certain newspaper, load it in a special viewer, and scroll through all the newspapers on it to find what you were looking for. Now, just type as much information as possible in the search bar and hit enter. Then, stroll down and choose the entries that seem relevant to what you're trying to find. If, after ten minutes and different rewriting of your quest, you don't find what you're looking for, you really are looking for a needle in a haystack of trazillions of bytes. Desist or go to a librarian at a big library who can narrow it down for you.
My husband has a pair of old boots not sold locally that someone who worked on oil rigs sold to him. He really wants a new pair. I looked it up online and found they are made by a company in France that will send me information on where to buy them at the closest store to us. He was surprised. He hadn't thought the information could be so easily found on the net. But the truth is that everything is there to be bought and sold.
Whenever I see an interesting bit of news, I check on it. I try to contrast it by checking different newspapers. Through that, I have found most newspapers in Spain are right of center and will support the government viewpoint in most areas. Even El País, once upon a time a quite objective paper, is now almost as rancid as the farthest right of all. It has changed much from the times I bought its international edition at the newsstand in Harvard Square. The farthest left is Público. That only has an online edition, and is consistently critical with the government, the church, and most of the European establishment, though European in its outlook rather than strictly parochial. Both will offer opposed viewpoints. The middle of both is most likely the closest to the complete truth. With a few clicks of the keyboard, fact checking is much easier (and cheaper) than going out and buying different newspapers.
I have found pages that tell me of recent earthquakes all over the world. I have also found a page, earth.nullschool.net, where I can see the air and ocean conditions on the entire globe, and the prediction for a few days ahead. I can even track airplanes flying over our airspace, and follow information on sunspots and the sun's magnetic storms. I have found all sorts of information! Whenever I have a question, I check the different webpages I've written down like I used to check an encyclopedia once. Most of this information is in English; there is a reason it is the international lingua franca these days. English is not only used between people of different countries when they meet, it is also the language of the internet. But most of my students prefer to rely on Google Translate to do the job, usually badly, for them.
So, those kids that only use internet for fast laughs and obsessive gaming are losing out on the entire encyclopedia of human knowledge. The sad truth is that it's not only kids. Many adults also dip into this wealth only to amuse themselves with the least intelligent humor that pulls an easy laugh out of them. People who don't love reading and all the joy it can bring will not appreciate the knowledge to be found here. It's like the kids who, years ago, used to read National Geographic only to look at the topless pictures of tribal women, instead of reading to learn about the world they lived in. How sad, to have all that information under the tips of your fingers, and not bother to search it out.
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