Pollution of the web: the extent of the damage to History

[Pardalis]

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on how the 9/11 CTs will have an effect on the teaching of history, especially to our young, since you can't type anything on Google without having hundreds of pages devoted to these lies popping up.

Seems the Truthers have taken this new media by storm and have taken a good lead ahead, as far as the dissemination of information goes (or misinformation in their case). The ratio of debunking material seems rather poor, compared to the astounding amount of CT garbage out there. One of the reasons is probably that "9/11 Truth" is a mission for Truthers, they are very invested in their "cause", while debunkers and other rational thinkers have better things to do. But still, ultimately, this could have an effect on History, in my opinion.

Kudos for everyone who take the time to create websites and resources debunking these lies BTW.

So, my question is, what's the extent of the damage, what will people think of 9/11 a few decades from now?

Note: Please, Truthers, keep out this thread, this is a serious discussion.

[Gravy]

In the past, teachers told their students, "There is no such thing as a stupid question."

Now they say, "Will you stop already with the stupid questions?"

I do hope that teachers are stressing that students should approach amateur internet history lessons with a critical mind.

[Hokulele]

The Internet is a dynamic medium, and I think that in time, quite a bit of what is floating out there right now will either be taken down deliberately, or will simply fade away. Many links are currently broken, return 404 errors, or the domain names have expired. There will always be pockets of madness, but as people lose interest (or finances), there will be fewer and fewer active sites spreading nonsense.

[Sparky]

Unfortunately, future generations will have to put up with the woo just as we put up with the Lincoln, Pearl Harbor, JFK and Apollo woo. There will always be a segment of society that will NEVER accept that what is accepted by the majority.

[leftysergeant]

The damage may have alrteady been done, and some of it is being done in areas to which no one is paying any attention outside of the few of us who take the time to counter the BS.

The sites hosted by white nationalists and tax resisters and anarchists will still be there, even when the public tires of obviously bogus theories about 9/11. in the meantime, there are innocent fools being introduced to Holocaust Denial. That is going to have an adverse effect on the teaching of history in coming decades, as the memories of the survivors are buried under the fakery and the eyewitnesses are no longer around to slap the liars down.

[contra]

Ok class it is time for Internet 101.

First lesson. Disregard google search results, wikipedia and youtube as sources of accurate information.

[Brainache]

I see it as an oportunity to teach how to assess the credibility of information. Teaching students not to accept the first thing they see as being true. The Truthers have provided a huge resource of bunk that a teacher can use to demonstrate the merits of proper research.

Think of it as an obstacle course which has been set up free of charge and which can be used for basic training for resaerchers.

[Alt+F4]

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on how the 9/11 CTs will have an effect on the teaching of history, especially to our young, since you can't type anything on Google without having hundreds of pages devoted to these lies popping up.

As a high school Social Studies teacher I've spent a considerable amount of time explaining to my students that just because something is on the Internet doesn't mean it's true.

It all started when a kid told me that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed it's name to KFC because they don't use real chickens but rather some sort of frankenstein chicken grown in a lab and since it's not real chicken the government won't let them use the word chicken. Several others chimed in that this was true. Me simply telling them that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard wasn't going to convince them, so off we went to the computer room only to find the word chicken used over and over again at the KFC website. The Internet is a great debunking tool if used correctly.

Yeah, the Internet is filled with lies and garbage but for kids who have been taught to think logically, reason will prevail. Recently I read an article from the 1920s describing how a new invention called the radio would ruin America's youth.

[Alt+F4]

In the past, teachers told their students, "There is no such thing as a stupid question."

Now they say, "Will you stop already with the stupid questions?"

I do hope that teachers are stressing that students should approach amateur internet history lessons with a critical mind.

Alvin: Miss I don't understand this webpage.
Me: Alvin, sweetheart, that page is in Dutch.
Alvin: Huh?
Me: It's another language and you don't speak it.

[Darth Rotor]

So, my question is, what's the extent of the damage, what will people think of 9/11 a few decades from now?

Note: Please, Truthers, keep out this thread, this is a serious discussion.

You cannot put the nuclear geni back into the bottle, try as you might.

You can't reverse the endless September.

The age of Enabled Stupidity has arrived, misnamed The Information Age.

DR

[Babbylonian]

The Internet has never been considered of great value as source material by good teachers, any more than magazines were when I was a youngster - I vividly remember a dressing down my Global Studies class received in high school when too many papers were submitted citing "Time" and "Newsweek" articles as references. That negative attitude toward the Internet will grow and grow as the number of lousy web pages increases. Good teachers will continue to point their students to libraries and, at most, instruct them to use the Internet as a tool to find real source material. Even a Wikipedia page containing misinformation might have links/references to good material.

It's a question of expectations. Those who thought that the Internet would supplant more traditional educational resources in toto were wrong, and any teacher who thinks it currently does so is someone who probably wasn't a great teacher before the Interwebs anyway. There were lousy teachers around before and there will be lousy teachers working tomorrow. One can only hope that kids have enough good teachers (and good adult contacts outside of school - parents, other relatives) that they can recognize the bad ones.

[Alferd_Packer]

I had a very good history teacher in college. He taught that history is what YOU interpret it to be. Interpretations change over time. Much of historical lore is in fact comprised of myths. Over time, those myths are exposed for what they are.

For example, George Washington and the cherry tree was once regarded by many as an actual fact. Today, most people recognize this story as a myth created by Parson Weems.

Conspiracy theories are little more than urban myths, interesting footnotes in history, but nothing to worry about.

[CHF]

While the internet has been the chief recruiting tool for the twoof movement I don't see on-line CT trash as a serious threat to history.

Kooky ideas have circulated in society long before there was the internet and they'll be around long into the future. Eventually all such ideas collapse under the weight of their own idiocy (except in the eyes of the die-hard converts) and are reduced to the status of the Moon Landing Hoax, Holocaust Denial etc. - exactly where 911 twoof is now heading.

[T.A.M.]

you can take the boy out of the paranoia, but you can't take the paranoia out of the boy.

TAM:)

[Pardalis]

you can take the boy out of the paranoia, but you can't take the paranoia out of the boy.

TAM:)

Is that your professional medical assessment? ;)

[Bell]

Alvin: Miss I don't understand this webpage.
Me: Alvin, sweetheart, that page is in Dutch.
Alvin: Huh?
Me: It's another language and you don't speak it.

What's so hard about reading Dutch? :confused:

Btw, true story??

[Pardalis]

One thing that worries me about teachers, is the ones in countries or regions unsympathetic to the US (even in Canada and in the US itself), who would not have the willingness or inclination to set the record straight in response to a young person's interrogation about these myths.

It suits alot of people to think the US is behind 9/11.

[cludgie]

I suspect the Internet's greatest contribution to history in this context will be proving once and for all that there really are alot of extremely stupid/gullible/greedy* people out there.

* delete as applicable

[T.A.M.]

Is that your professional medical assessment? ;)

Well a good shot of haldol, or some Respiradol Wafers can help, but other wise, it is pretty much true...lol

TAM:)

[Slayhamlet]

You cannot put the nuclear geni back into the bottle, try as you might.

You can't reverse the endless September.

The age of Enabled Stupidity has arrived, misnamed The Information Age.

DR

The Age of Enabled Stupidity. Brilliant! I'll have to remember that. :D

[Brainster]

The 3-4 history teachers I have interacted with a the local school where I've done several debunking lectures all stated that they are concerned about the amount of misinformation that is out there. The kids do not drill down past the first page of replies on Google and rely overly on Wikipedia. They are not yet equipped to be critical consumers of information.

[CHF]

The 3-4 history teachers I have interacted with a the local school where I've done several debunking lectures all stated that they are concerned about the amount of misinformation that is out there. The kids do not drill down past the first page of replies on Google and rely overly on Wikipedia. They are not yet equipped to be critical consumers of information.

Most of them will out grow it or turn away once they examine this stuff in detail.

Back in 1999, when I was 19, I was briefly fooled by Russian/Serbia websites that claimed 78+ NATO jets shot down during the Kosovo War. The logic and "evidence" used was similar in many ways to 9/11 CTs - conclusions drawn from shreds of information, misunderstandings, misrepresenting photos, unreliable witnesses, or even doctored photos and stuff that was just made up!

When I got down to examining each piece of evidence, it all fell apart very quickly. Yet I still see those bullcrap NATO losses claims on youtube every now and then...

[dudalb]

The Age of Enabled Stupidity. Brilliant! I'll have to remember that. :D


That is worthy of Harlan Ellison,who has been pretty vocal about how the Internet is responsible for the spread of stupidity.
This is why,although I respect Al Gore,his "the Internet will be the salvation of us all" routine from his most recent book,is pretty unconvicing.

[T.A.M.]

the biggest reason, by far, that the 9/11 truth CTs have caught on, is this...Right CT at the right time.

If Bush had been defeated in 2004, we wouldn't even be talking about this now.

TAM:)

[DavidS]

Every 17 milliseconds, someone somewere in the world posts something extremely stupid to the Internet.

Our mission is to find this person, and stop him.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Every 17 milliseconds, someone somewere in the world posts something extremely stupid to the Internet.

Our mission is to find this person, and stop him.

I suspect he is the one who has been banging the woman who gives birth every 6 seconds. ;)

[bje]

I have no ability to predict what effects this all will have on the teaching of history, but I hope it's a wake-up call to the academic profession to the lack of courses and consistent training in logic and critical thinking skills, a state of affairs that long preceded 9/11, and should, IMHO, be a part of every high school level curriculum.

[Alt+F4]

What's so hard about reading Dutch? :confused:

Btw, true story??

Oh, he could read the Dutch, he just couldn't figure out why he didn't understand what it was saying.

True story from just yesterday.

[Bell]

Oh, he could read the Dutch, he just couldn't figure out why he didn't understand what it was saying.

True story from just yesterday.

Where do you reside? Not The Netherlands, I presume.

In that case... :eye-poppi

[DavidS]

I suspect he is the one who has been banging the woman who gives birth every 6 seconds. ;)
Yeah, that's the guy!

Thanks for recognizing the reference; our fascist sysadmins stripped off all the fortune stuff, so I had to paraphrase a personal favorite from long-faded memory.

[AMTMAN]

When my wife was going to college the department of which she was a student did not allow the internet to be used as a source for papers. This was in the mid to late nineties when the internet was still new. Part of the reason was the powers that be viewed the net as the easy way out. The other reason was they knew a lot of junk was out there already polluting the net.

[Davidlpf]

I do not see the internet as spreading stupid, just a place place for stupid to collect into one big ball of stupid.

[Brainache]

I do not see the internet as spreading stupid, just a place place for stupid to collect into one big ball of stupid.

If it weren't for all the stupid, I for one wouldn't bother with it at all.

[jezcoe]

A collection of the big ball of Stupid that has sadly stopped a few years ago.
http://www.ratbags.com/loon/index.html
If it wasn't for the Stupid what would the internet be for? Getting things done?

[Hamradioguy]

I have no ability to predict what effects this all will have on the teaching of history, but I hope it's a wake-up call to the academic profession to the lack of courses and consistent training in logic and critical thinking skills, a state of affairs that long preceded 9/11, and should, IMHO, be a part of every high school level curriculum.

Couldn't agree more. But it may be a tough sell. I've tried off and on for five years now to sponsor a Critical Thinking essay contest in various local schools for the very reasone mentioned in previous posts. Students could write any kind of essay that demonstrates critical thinking, outside judges would select a winner and runnerup(s), and there would be substantial cash prizes. I was completely ignored by two different administrations in our local high school- Neither principal bothered to reply to my letters. The history/civics teacher in the school told me he didn't think any of his students would be capable of doing something like this. A teacher in the high school one town over said he was quite certain none of his students would be interested in participating in a critical thinking essay contest. Not very encouraging. (I've given the money that would have gone to the students to the JREF instead....)