You might assume the average person today knows more and understands more than all his ancestors because of the vast wealth of information on the Internet. That’s an illusion. It’s true that almost any tidbit of data you want can be called up instantly by a search engine. Wikipedia will give you a marginally reliable crowdsourced overview of practically any topic in summary form (with large headings that facilitate speed-reading). Thus without any real intellectual effort, you can appear to know far more than you truly understand.
Such a casual, superficial approach to learning feeds the worst tendencies of a pragmatic culture. People see no need to master any field of knowledge or remember specific facts. Old-style education seems a waste of time for a generation weaned on smartphones. Why study mathematics — or anything, for that matter — when you can get speedy answers to almost any question on a hand-held device?
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