Things have changed since I started using computers. In the old days (1970s) we would punch data cards, run them through a card reader and then walk across campus to get our dot matrix printout on that wide paper with the holes punched in the sides. (Younger people reading this have no idea what I am talking about.) Today everything is instant; instant information and instant answers. However, instant does not mean better, and it certainly does not mean good, accurate, reasoned or fair. Last week a local TV station had an "investigative report" on the supposed allergenic danger posed by transgenic (genetically modified) crops. I was shocked to listen to the ignorance and misinformation presented as fact. Almost nothing in the report was accurate and the young reporter did not know enough about the subject to even question the credibility of her "sources", which included a web-captured misleading and factually false video from an anti-GM group.
It seems that this world of "instant" has led to a lot of lazy thinking. I don't know whether schools have stopped teaching critical thinking but my experience with recent college students leads me to believe that they have. On average, college students can't think and can't write. Of course there are exceptions, and these students are an increasingly valuable commodity. As to the media, perhaps the professionals out there think they can get away with garbage reporting because their audience won't know the difference between good work and shoddy work. Or perhaps the media professionals don't know the difference themselves. Either way the acknowledgement of these possibilities make me profoundly worried for the future of the nation.
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