November 14, 2011
trusting the machine
Isn’t it really a perennial problem? It’s just the authority is an algorithm instead of a human being:
High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
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“[The librarian] teaches them to analyze the tone of a web page to judge whether it was created by an academic, an advocacy group, or a hobbyist.”
Combined with our penchant to hold on to our first opinions that presents a pretty bleak picture. Are we going to see more anti-vaxxers and their ilk?
Oh, dear. An academic source is to be swallowed without question? I fear there’s more to analyzing tone than that.