Information Literacy and the Google Generation

Here's a recent report that argues "The Google Generation" -- kids born after 1993 -- have no idea of a life without the Internet, and while that gives them great access to information, that doesn't mean they are literate beyond logging onto their computers.

Information Literacy must be earned through hard work and by acute and disbelieving analyses of data that, at times, might conflict with established ideas and even contradict itself in situ.

The Google Generation knows how to find information fast, but they are unable to parse what they discover beyond merely cutting-and-pasting search return results into their research papers.

We must find a way to demystify the Google Generation's technical capacity to wow and then bring them back to the pen and the paper. We need to re-establish the idea of a library card catalog and the requirement to double-check sources and confirm facts from three different angles.

The Google Generation -- while smart and savvy -- are not cunning enough to realize most of what they read on the Internet is not true, or even factually accurate, in a scholarly circumstance.

Is the Internet Intellectual?

A fascinating online debate was recently had on the Wall Street Journal website where the issue at hand was the role of the Internet in Intellectualism. Our favorite quote came from David Weinberger:

But, why should we trust the way "monkeys" (as you refer to Web users in your book) connect the pieces? We shouldn't trust them blindly. Open up The Britannica at random and you're far more likely to find reliable knowledge than if you were to open up the Web at random. That's why we don't open up the Web at random. Instead, we rely upon a wide range of trust mechanisms, appropriate to their domain, to guide us. Amazon gives you ways of checking to see if a particular reviewer is trustworthy , but the mechanisms are not particularly rigorous because not all that much is at stake when considering the 6,001st review of a Harry Potter book. At eBay, where your money is at risk, the trust mechanisms are more reliable. On a blog, the persistence of previous posts means you can read further to see if you trust the blogger. More important, the recommendation of other bloggers you already trust is a good indicator. At Wikipedia, the rather sophisticated governance processes help establish trust, as does the complete transparency of the discussions behind the articles. On mailing lists, we learn over time who's a blowhard and who's a source of knowledge even if we don't know what her real name is. These examples are not exceptions. They are the rule and they have been from the beginning, because from the beginning the Web has been about inventing ways to make its own massness -- its miscellaneousness -- useful.

We are against Wikipedia as scholarly resource and CBS News recognized our hard stand against Wikipedia as a reliable fountain of honesty and information.

Facts need more than community collaboration to be made truthful in the long view of the human world.