Posts Tagged With 'internet'

LOL: Lack of Learning

Posted by Mannimal in Contributions, Issue 2 - Full Text January 12, 2012  |  No Comments

How your “Tweeting Disorder” is munching on your brain

By: Jessica Cahill

Internet usage today yields a combination of useful information and mindless pleasure. It is employed as an educational tool that provides credible and rapidly available sources for students. Lecture notes and lab outlines are downloadable at the click of a mouse. Indeed, the array of material has the potential to take research to a whole new level. Trinity College itself relies heavily on its website, whose functions range from providing scholarship information to party sign-ups. However, there is a flip side to the benefits of Internet usage that is taking universities by force.

What is being popularized within the Internet is simplicity. This idea has manifested itself through communication. The idea’s onslaught is credited to the text message, which sends shorthand messages in lieu of a phone call. Websites like Twitter have sprung up that are centred around this craze. But why does the world need updates on the lives of those they “follow” in 140 characters or less? Is email not satisfactory enough? In the pre-Twitter era, hundreds were not scratching their heads wondering, “How can I follow the minute-by- minute actions of Pujan?”.

One may question whether status updates will soon be limited to punctuation

marks.

Regardless, Twitter’s system of effortless, undemanding communication is accessed by 3 million accounts daily.

This downsize of communication is hindering classroom performance. Gregory Levey, a professor at Ryerson University, stated that “plug in: tune out” perfectly captures the attitudes of adults today. Students employ the virtual world as a classroom escape. According to Levey, teaching has become the challenge of educating the “iGeneration”. Our constant use of technology is changing the way our brain stores information and processes interactions – and not for the better.

Just a few hours online each day is enough to weaken certain neural processes and train the brain to create shortcuts for acquiring information. The result is that the brain has less capacity for long-term storage. In reality, students will outgrow their proficiency to look beyond the Internet for information. With students lacking critical analytical skills, the way knowledge is obtained has been vastly altered.

Levey states that the effects of limited communication in order to deliver blasts of information can be seen in writing comprehension. The more students access social media sites, the more difficult it will be to create a 3000-word essay. Establishing a thesis and forging effective arguments begins to feel impossible when contrasted to creating an efficient, 140-character post.

Even more ridiculous is that Internet slang is being intertwined with formal writing. According to Levey, two of his students have used “LOL” and “gr8” in papers, among other online shorthands. “One student, in a literature paper…for a third year class of U of T, quoted icanhascheezburger.com,” said Levey.

Researchers such as Levey have concluded that they will need to find ways toelongate the ever-shrinking attention span of students. The solution does not lie in finding new ways to fulfill their needs, but in impeding the usage of computers. Levey enforces a strict laptop ban in his classroom, thereby forcing students to handwrite notes. The result? A more engaged and productive group that promotes a high quality of discussion. This clearly accredits more traditional learning methods, giving solid meaning to the phrase

“tried and true.”

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The Missing Link

Posted by Mannimal in Issue 2 - Full Text, Politics January 12, 2012  |  No Comments

Crookes v. Newton and its implications for Internet freedom

By: Samuel Greene

On October 19th, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Crookes v. Newton (Crookes) that posting a hyperlink to a defamatory website does not in itself constitute defamation. This decision was hailed as a victory for Internet freedom and the rights of bloggers. Students, who frequently use social media to view and disseminate hyperlinked content, have responded particularly positively. And yet, while I agree that Crookes does provide some measure of protection for free speakers on the Internet, the scope of its potential application has been either exaggerated or misattributed.

So what was Crookes about? Currently, to publish defamatory material is to commit defamation, whether or not one is the material’s author. The case, therefore, questioned whether a hyperlink constitutes publication. In the end, the court ruled that they do not; rather, hyperlinks are more analogous to footnotes since they simply make reference to another source, but do not repeat or copy it.

Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie argued that applying a traditional standard to hyperlinks would place an undue burden on anyone posting them. The linker has no control over the content of the site they are linking, so it would be unfair to make them legally liable for it. Furthermore, the potential liability might dissuade individuals from posting links to controversial content, thereby precipitating a “chilling effect” on free speech. Protecting bloggers, Tweeters and status-updaters from legal action resulting from the content of their hyperlinks protects the free flow of information on the Internet. Hence the presumed victory for freedom of expression.

However, the protection of content linking that Crookes has extended is more limited than the blogosphere and mainstream media seem to believe. Some argue that this decision might serve as a precedent for cases in which copyright holders demand payment for publication of links to reproductions of their media. The implication of Crookes, so the argument goes, is that sites like HypeMachine – which aggregate music content through linking – would be exempt from liability for copyright infringement.

But Crookes does not extend an absolute protection to speech propagated by hyperlinking. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin stated that “a hyperlink should constitute publication if, read contextually, the text that includes the hyperlink constitutes adoption or endorsement of the specific content it links to.” Music and video aggregation tends to much more explicitly endorse and adopt copyright infringement than do passive hyperlinks to defamatory content.

The Court clearly understood the Internet’s capacity for expression and information distribution, and that the medium has “tremendous power” to do harm. On that note, the Court is not endorsing an unrestricted right to hyperlink just any content. Indeed, in this case, the Supreme Court grappled with the profound problems posed by the Internet to traditional protection of information and limitations on speech; such approaches do not quite fit the realities of Internet communication and the expectations that people have about it.

As Madame Justice Abella writes, “Strict application of the publication rule in these circumstances would be like trying to fit a square archaic peg into the hexagonal hole of modernity.”

Yet advocates for Internet freedom should not read too much into the Crookes decision.Although it is difficult to come to grips with how to fairly and appropriately regulate speech on the Internet, it is obvious that some rules are necessary, and the Supreme Court will work to that end.

As much as Twitter users might like to believe that they have a right to write whatever they want, the world will be a worse place if they’re actually allowed to.

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