Head In the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up, William Poundstone, Little Brown & Co., 2016
Why should I learn anything when I can just look it up on Google? That's the question this book attempts to answer.
Many areas of knowledge correlate with the quality of our lives, including areas like health, wealth and happiness. The author is not suggesting that everyone should be smart enough to appear on a TV show like "Jeopardy." It's totally fine if a person's knowledge is "a mile wide and an inch deep." The author found strong correlations between income and scores on general knowledge quizzes (even if they are multiple choice). It's possible that learning improves cognitive abilities that are useful almost anywhere, including in a career.
How bad is the ignorance of the average American? Less that 10 percent of Americans don't know what country New Mexico is in. About the same percentage of younger Americans can find Afghanistan on a map, according to a 2006 National Geographic poll. More than half could not find Delaware on a map.
People who don't know which city has an airport called LaGuardia correlates with thinking that there are at least twice as many Asians in America than there actually are. Not knowing that the Sun is bigger than Earth correlates with supporting bakers who refuse to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples. Thinking that America has more people has more people than India correlates with refusing to eat genetically modified food. Not knowing how many US Senators there are, or thinking that early humans hunted dinosaurs, correlates with refusing to vaccinate children for measles, mumps and rubella.
According to a 2015 report from the Educational Testing Service (the people behind the SAT's), more than half of Millennials don't know the poison that killed Socrates; they can't name the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson; they don't know who recorded "All Shook Up" and "Heartbreak Hotel"; they don't know who (in popular myth) designed and sewed the first American flag; they can't name the secret project that built the first atomic bomb; they can't name the largest ocean on Earth, the longest river in South America or the city whose airport is Heathrow.
Wow (and not in a good way). These people are going to be running America in the near future? This is a very disheartening book, and is extremely highly recommended.
This blog will consist of book reviews, written by me, on a wide variety of genres. If have a book that you would like me to review, you can reach me at plappen@yahoo.com. I also post my reviews to 10 or 11 different websites (honestly).
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I post my reviews to:
booklore.co.uk
midwestbookreview.com
Amazon and B&N (of course)
Librarything.com
Goodreads.com
Books-a-million.com
Reviewcentre.com
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Good post, I always look for sites where I can read review of different things and your post is best for that. Thank you for sharing it with us
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