Roundtable Wrap-Up: RT 3

The internet provides very cheap entertainment, but does it create a divide between academics and entertainment? The internet appears to be changing how we process information. Since the creation of the internet people have become different consumers of media and news. Studies have shown that this change in how we process media has actually caused changes in our physical brain structure and also its physiology. This small change in how people are processing media may have led to a lack of synthesizing information, and more of a focus on information as opposed to knowledge. The move towards information over knowledge is affecting our society, and the world as a whole. The pace of the world is changing, and this change is becoming culturally and societally pervasive. The bombardment of information may be making it more difficult to become a well informed citizen, which makes it hard to really understand policy and become knowledgeable on the policy. If the amount of energy it requires to make an informed vote outweighs the impact of the vote then people may chose to vote uninformed - or simply not vote at all. If these uniformed community members fail to understand what is happening locally, how are they expected to actively participate in their community, let alone see global implications of their actions and understand international problems that will - and should - influence domestic policy?