By Ananya S Guha.
The world is changing because of the internet and the breakneck speed with which it generates information. That information is there on the world wide web for everyone to happily lap up. Cut and paste is also today’s syndrome of paying deference to that information that is just under your nose, long or short, or at the tip of your nippy little fingers. So if you have to write on anything from a birthday speech to Sigmund Freud, hey presto you cut and paste, paste and cut, add, delete, edit whatever you can. That information is not necessarily knowledge is glossed over by practitioners of the internet, and information is passed off as knowledge. Children do project work with the cut and paste theory and apply it assiduously to practice. Teachers accept it. Papers are shamelessly written by scholars using this method. Has the internet nullified creativity, originality and the thinking processes? In social network sites, which were originally established to reconnect with old friends people post photographs of themselves, their cats, their dogs, their breakfast and lunch. Of course everyone has a right to do so; we are after all sharing information with a clean narcissistic drive. Nothing wrong with that! Or showing off about the places you have visited, the hotels you have stayed in. Why not? We are disseminating information in an information-driven society.
However when information is distorted, facts cleverly changed then social networking sites play roles of spreading the viral infection. So can news sites on the web. The media explosion is there for everyone to see. From the formal, to the non formal to the informal where news reporting is personal- personal visit, eateries, dress, journalism has become cliquish and highly personalised. Anything wrong with that? No one says so. But interference with facts, posting doctored photos, cutting and pasting cleverly add not only to discomfort, but the discontinuance of what the internet was meant to serve- knowledge, education. creativity. Instead of cut and paste if teachers taught children how to tap creative resources by means of the internet, we would be contributing to the world of education. The world of work also has a direct connection with the usage of the internet.
The rise of the parallel media in the form of social networking sites is in itself both good and bad. This is put rather simplistically, but parallel media has the potential to spread rumours, and incite feelings. Also it throws caution to the winds- reprehensible use of language, slander, disrespect are some of the highlights. It is a new found weapon, almost to say: look there, I have the guts to say anything. That is not guts, that is bullying and muscle power, under the guise of the subtleties of a brackish information power.
E Learning has become unlearning then. The concerted move in education would be to harness the internet as a solid educational tool right from school education to higher education. It has the potential to teach by way of free and open resources, the potential for academic advising and counselling and the power to have group enabled discussions, think of yahoo or google, google plus etc. Skype can be used for education, not only to interview celebrities! We have education at our tips, thanks to the internet, now is the time we must cash on it in a country like India, where only a the ‘ smart ‘ have the benefit of smart classrooms. What about rural poor school children? Are they less computer savvy?
The curious, exciting world of the internet is slowly turning into a commodity of expression and oddities of perversity. By aligning it with mobile phones, we are on the threshold of taking it or not to the creative world of education- where learning is both a treasure and a pleasure. Children should revel in its insights, not its oddities, adults not its perverseness.
Recently I read a paper on ” Plagiarism”. That is enough to indicate what the world has now come to. People are writing papers on plagiarism,with citations! That is a warning good enough, and added to this software is devised to combat the rising menace of plagiarism, thanks to the internet. In this rather inverted world of information, technology and knowledge, how do we hold high our heads and say that the world is still not in chains, broken by narrow domestic walls, as Tagore would argue?
An international community of terrorists is known to be ‘ successful ‘ because of its savvy use of technology; students and researchers are manacled by cut and paste. It is really a brave new world that we have today. The proverbial double edged sword is a clever interweaving and interplay of text and context. The narrative of the internet is a sordid story of appropriate use and abuse. The world of education must show the way for apposite use of technology to harness growth and development of children, students, and to foster a vibrant creative spirit.