Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web and the CRLFTransformation of the Essence of Being Human

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
This article tries to argue that our inclination to click our way CRLFthrough the world wide web has become a substitute for CRLFthinking. Oh for the days of the book, pines the author, when the CRLFdelay of several hours or days before the next one arrives would CRLFgive us time to think about, and perhaps even understand, the CRLFlast one. Oh for the days when the answers were not at our CRLFfingertips, when instead we CRLFhad to reason our way to a conclusion. Pardon me, but this is a CRLFload of hooey. Clicking is not a replacement for thinking, it's a CRLFreplacement for waiting - waiting for the book to arrive, waiting CRLFfor the information to become available, waiting for an author or CRLFspeaker to finish droning on and on before something interesting CRLFcan come along. We are, as the author asserts, a species of CRLFwanderers. But that is probably because we have found the CRLFwaiting so unbearable.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 11:25 a.m.

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