Understanding social interaction

"(...)  individuals who cannot comprehend other people's influence and methods in social encounters, and understand how their own responses will serve mutual goals and influence other people's feelings for them, do not maintain important relationships".

Everyday Persuasion Knowledge, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 16(2), 1999, p. 187

Internet and our brains

Is Internet increasing or damaging our knowledge? The debate is over.

Wiki in new clothes

coming soon.

For me, Wikipedia represents a very good proof of how knowledge is challenged by the 2.0 world. With advantages and disadvantages, of course: the increase of the number of people with direct accesss to information - both as consumers and producers of information - means not only that we are able to enrich our culture easily, but also that the reliability of sources - hence, the doubtful value of what we are reading - should be checked at least twice. But, in the same time, the affordability of a system as Wiki offer to many people - not with purposive "technical" skills to enter, make the corrections considered appropriate and delivering, at the end of the process, the valuable version.

Google and knowledge

an antinomic couple?

Should we fear that Internet will kill the "true" knowledge? I don't think Internet in itself is the big issue we should worry about. It is, in fact, a huge, virtual library with everything you never dream it could be found.

Better, we should put under close scrutiny the education systems in themselves, and the ways in which the knowledge it is distributed. For a long time, the focus was on facts, now, we should mostly focused on how to use facts.

My choice is somewhere in-between: I know very well the system focused on facts, facts, facts. When, for example, you have to learn by heart - not by mind - long poetries, without having any idea about what it is all about, because you don't have time to think. In the same time, searching the Internet without clear criteria about what you are looking for, in terms of being able to make your own choices among thousand of results, it is problematic. Our capacity to know it is extremely limited, in comparison with the enormous volume of knowledge. But, a "voie royale" should be the pure desire of knowing and knowing and knowing.