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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Asklemmy
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I would go back a few years and ask: Should i let a 16 year old use search engines?
Probably not too different
That’s exactly my perspective.
I came of age with the birth of the web. I was using systems like Usenet, gopher, wais, and that sort of thing. I was very much into the whole cypherpunk, “information wants to be free” philosophy that thought that the more information people had, the more they could talk to each other, the better the world would be.
Boy, was I wrong.
But you can’t put the genie back into the bottle. So now, in addition to having NPR online, we have kids eating tide pods and getting recruited into fascist ideologies. And of course it’s not just kids. It’s tough to see how the anti-vax movement or QAnon could have grown without the internet (which obviously has search engines as a major driver of traffic).
I think you’re better off teaching critical thinking, and even demonstrating the failings of ChatGPT by showing them how bad it is at answering questions. There’s plenty of resources you can find that should give you a starting point. Ironically, you can find them using a search engine.
I think that's a good take on things.
Ultimately it still holds true. Information does want to be free. You just can't mix that with misinformation, have everything on the same level and a general audience completely oblivious to the fact and uneducated.
Things have changed. Back in those times it was a small elite on the internet. People who could afford computers and an internet connection and make some use out of it. You needed some amount of intelligence because you had to put some effort in to get online, learn about the tools because that wasn't easy or provided to you. So you'd generally be at least somewhat intelligent if you ended up on the internet. And that's beneficial when it comes to receiving unfiltered information. Combined with the fact that there were comparatively more academics and students, because that was the origin of the internet.
And it wasn't that common to push your agenda there or advertise for your skewed political views in the way people do it nowadays. Due to the nature of the internet and the amount of people there, it wasn't worth the effort. You'd be better off focusing somewhere else where you could influence more people. So the dynamics were just different due to history and circumstances.
Things have changed. Nowadays everyone is online all the time. It's the place to influence people and make money. And that's the other part of the problem. The actual people, connecting them and providing information to them (or to each other) isn't what's most of the internet is about, anymore. Motivations are gathering data about people and selling them, making people become addicted to your platform so they spend more time there and you can make more money. Everyone is competing for attention. And bad, emotional stories are what works best. Giving people the "simple truths" they seek instead of an intellectual and nuanced view. Factuality just gets in the way of all of that.
I sometimes like to compare that to the Age of Reason / Enlightenment. Back then it was monarchs, bad dynamics and missing education. Now it's big tech companies, bad dynamics and insufficient education. People need to get emancipated, educated and leave the current "immature state of ignorance" (to quote Kant.)
Information and education are key. And the internet, algorithms and AI are just tools. They can be used for progress, or to enslave us. At least the internet has the potential (and was build) to connect people and provide a level playing field to everyone. But it can be used for a variety of different things. And choosing the right things isn't something that can be solved by technology alone.