Technology reduces the value of old people, warns MIT computer guru

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/8/2009 02:17 PM, Dennis Baron wrote:
>There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
>Technology reduces the value of old people, warns MIT computer guru
>
>Philip Greenspun, an MIT software engineer and hi-tech guru, argues in
>a recent blog post that "technology reduces the value of old people."

Nah, I don't believe it.  He's passe -- the ghost past of Greenspan.

Joel

>It's not that old people don't do technology. On the contrary, many of
>them are heavy users of computers and cell phones. It's that the young
>won't bother tapping the knowledge of their elders because they can
>get so much more, so much faster from Wikipedia and Google. . . .
>
>According to Greenspun, "An old person will know more than a young
>person, but can any person, young or old, know as much as Google and
>Wikipedia? Why would a young person ask an elder the answer to a fact
>question that can be solved authoritatively in 10 seconds with a Web
>search?"
>
>read the complete post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
>____________________
>Dennis Baron
>Professor of English and Linguistics
>Department of English
>University of Illinois
>608 S. Wright St.
>Urbana, IL 61801
>
>office: 217-244-0568
>fax: 217-333-4321
>
>http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron
>
>read the Web of Language:
>http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
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