Has the internet contributed to the fight against ignorance? Specifically, has the percentage of really dopey questions sent to the Straight Dope changed at all over the decades?
I ask because the “echo chamber” effect has me worried that we may be seeing an increase in ignorance over time. I work in the high tech industry and would hate to think that the benefit of the internet to the dopeys outweighs the benefit to the Dopers.
Don’t know – certainly stupid stuff gets spread further, wider, and faster than before, but I couldn’t tell you if the Internet is just homogenizing the stupidity rather than having a bunch of local brands.
In our defense, however, we just claim to be fighting it. Winning isn’t necessarily in the cards.
It’s taking longer than we thought.
The internet CAN be used to fight ignorance. A dictionary can be used to spell words correctly or just prop a door open.
Moved from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem, moderator
In one way, yes. Research is so much easier today!
Twenty years ago, for research for a novel, I wanted street maps of Marseilles, France. Big city. Maps should be in a library, right? WRONG! Nothing in the city library, nothing in the local university libraries. Some small-scale maps, but no street guides, no Baedekers, no Thomas Brothers, no ordnance survey maps.
Now? Google Maps satellite view, and I can zoom in on every back alley, every slip at the marina, every rooftop garden, everything.
For decades, I wanted to find the words to a piece of music (“The Cries of London” by Richard Dering.) I searched desperately. Nowadays? I found someone staging a performance of the work at a university in Texas, wrote to them, they sent me to a professor in Chicago, he sent me the words.
God, I love the information age!
A big Yes. However there are a lot of countries where internet penetration is still very low. Maybe low cost smartphones and 4G packages will correct it, hopefully soon. There is also a minor question of language.
If you think that penetration on the internet is low, perhaps you’re not doing it right. 
But in another way, no. Research is so much easier today!
I’ve come to the conclusion that “The Internet” is holding at least 60% of my knowledge for me. That is, I don’t have to actually put information into long term storage in my brain. I can look up things I used to know, like directions and the major exports of Uruguay and my friends birthdays and the Latin name for motherwort and which of those Omega fatty acids is the “good” one. I still need to have a rough understanding and know how to find information and sift through the crap and figure out what it all means, but I know - as in, have accurate long term recall - far fewer facts than I did in 1992.
So…I guess we need to start by defining “ignorance”.
I find it isn’t the lack of good information, it’s the lack of skills in finding the information. I’m not sure that schools teach kids how to do research anymore. I know my kids, left to their own devices, usually settle for the first couple of links and call it a day. Sometimes that’s enough, often it isn’t and I’m not sure ignorance is being sufficiently fought despite the abundance of good information and ease of access.
Fair enough! I remember much the same argument being made against calculators in school classrooms: they were said to degrade students’ ability to do simple arithmetic. Word processors’ spell-checking functions may be degrading our ability to spell.
But…isn’t that true of any reference book? Or, heck, of writing itself? Here I am, putting stuff down on paper that I ought to have memorized?
This said, I would redefine “working knowledge” to include stuff that you don’t have in your biological brain, but that you know how to find out quickly and easily. Stuff where you are familiar with the exact path. It isn’t good enough to say, “Oh, that’s in the library somewhere,” but to say, “Oh, yes, that’s in Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage, and I have the latest version on my e-reader.”
ETA: hm! I don’t find that they have an e-reader version. Ignorance displayed, ignorance fought!
Sure is. The only difference I see is that when it was more work to drive to the library and look something up, it was just easier to remember more things than reference them when needed. So while the general “problem” was the same, it’s even deeper now, 'cause I carry my access to my computer brain in my pocket.
When I read accounts of the vast amount of knowledge that university students (or, heck, elementary school students) were expected to remember and regurgitate in Cicero’s day, I hang my head in shame. Memory palaces (Method of loci) and other such mnemonic devices were utilized out of need, not as parlor tricks.
I expect that by my great-grandchildren’s day (or maybe sooner) they’ll have some sort of neural implant which will let them directly access extrabiological stored information. We are turning ourselves into cyborgs, instead of inventing them in a robotics lab. 