Today is the Internet day in Spain (but I’m not sure if it’s also in other countries). The Government has organized some events in Madrid (yes, in the Real World™), showing no idea of what Internet is. A Spanish newspaper was asking “Can you live without internet (in Spanish)?”… interesting question.
Internet for me is an incredible collection of knowledge. This is mostly good… for example, I discovered my first hobby (the game of Go) thanks to it. And I’ve met with a lot of new people (mostly clever people).
But sometimes it can be bad. I constantly see so in my professional world (web developing) where I met a lot of people who “blindy follows internet recipes”. Let’s explain this. I’m lucky of having an University background in Computer Science. But some people don’t have a background, and use Internet as a “consulting thing” to find information about the problem that they are working on. They usually arrive at a page with a recipe to sort out the problem, like “drop down menus made easy” or “install a CVS server in 30 seconds”. Next they blindy follow the recipe. And maybe it’s not a correct method to use… they see the tree, but don’t see/understand the woods. The worst part is that they have the unreal perception of being good professionals!!
I mean… it’s good having all this incredible amount of knowledge. But sometimes you need a background (real studies, books, and such things) to completely understand the recipes. For example, I play piano and flute, and have some ideas about reading a music score; I even compose sometimes, short songs. But I clearly know that I’m not a good musician.
“The cobbler should stick to his last”
(I’m sorry, I used internet to find this phrase, and I’m not a phrasist professional)
