Are People Better Informed in the Information Society?

After reading this issue I found it interesting that both Linda Jackson and Mark Bauerlin take a different approach towards answering this question. The main focus of Jckson and her colleague's research is that internet usage at home helps the academic performance of low income children, whereas Bauerlin uses his research to argue that this generation of young Americans are poorly educated and will not succeed in work needed for the future of the United States because of the digital age. After reading both opinions I found that using the internet has both positive and negative outcomes; some people use the internet to gather information and educate themselves on the latest news and others may use the internet in an inappropriate way. When reading this issue I found Jackson's research more interesting because I already hear a lot pf opinions and people studying the youth generation now and how their values, morals, and intellect are only getting worse because of the digital age. The first argument that I found interesting from Jackson and her colleague's study is that computer skills improves cognitive skills, mainly visual skills. The example that they used were playing computer games, such as video games that have rapid movement, imagery, intense interaction, and multiple activities occuring at the same time because it improves ones visual intelligence skills. I thought this was interesting because so many people play video games now, mainly boys, and sometimes have an obsession with them, but from this research I learned that theu are actually improvig their visual intelligence. A second argument that Jackson and her colleague's focused on a lot is the idea of using resources at home such as the compter to get better success in mathematics and science. I agree with this argument because having a computer at home gives one access to the internet and other toold such as computer games like solitaire, chess, minesweeper, etc on the computer at all times to improve mathematics and science skills. In realtion to the idea of home internet access, Jackspn and her colleagues also came up with the idea that poor children with an academic performance below average are the ones less likely to have access to internet at home. An argument that I thought was obvious that Jackson and her colleagues found was that younger children use the internet more for information gathering than theu do for communication purposes. I thought this was obvious because younger children don't use e-mail, facebook, and dating sites as much as adolescents and adults. The last argument that Jackson and her colleagues found that ws interesting to me is the cultural influence that some people have on communication preferences. The example that Jackson used is the African-American culture and how they are an "oral cilture," which means that they prefer to hold face-toface communication rather than e-mail. I thought this was very interesting because in Hawaiian culture we are the same and believe that befire technology was convinient towards education, such as e-mail, using a telephone to communicate with someone was frowned upon as a sign of laziness or disrespect when one can simply write a letter or personally find a way to speak face-to-face. In conclusion, are people better informed in the information society?Yes, I believe that although there are many inappropriate websites and resources online, the public can definetly choose whether they want to go online and research the latest news, improve their mathematic and science skills, visual intelligence skills, or take advantage of ot by chatting and spending hours on facebook.