Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ To navigate all the junk on the internet, you need powers of critical thinking — but also critical ignoring

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I guess I can accept 'critical ignoring' as a type of learned pattern recognition. But I want to be clear about something. Sam Wineburg says, "on the web, where a witches' brew of advertisers, lobbyists, conspiracy theorists, and foreign governments conspire to hijack attention." True enough, I suppose. But crucially, this has always been the case. Misinformation didn't begin with the web - or did you forget about things like propaganda, talk radio and Fox News? And I would add, it's misinformation to point to "the dangers of dwelling on an unknown site" as though the well known sites are benign and harmless. All our media can mislead, and any source can be untrustworthy. But with practice, we can figure out (more or less) when they are lying and when it's to their advantage to tell the truth.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:28 a.m.

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