Are we faking cultural literacy?
Thanks to social media, and other online content, it's never been easier to find information. But with so much information to find, some say it's also easier to pretend to know everything, without really knowing anything.
Trying to stay on top of everything was targeted by the insightful U.S. comedy show, Portlandia...
And last week, The New York Times published an opinion piece called Faking Cultural Literacy. The writer, Karl Taro Greenfeld, admits to faking knowledge, and says it's never been so easy to pretend to know so much.
I think we live in an era where it is easier to fake our way through any conversation, and pretend to have some knowledge of the subject at hand, because it is easier to pick up data and various bits of information from our social media feeds.Karl Taro Greenfeld
So is it true we're becoming a culture of know-it-alls with only a light dusting of real knowledge? We reached three guests who know much --if not quite all-- on the matter:
- Alexandra Samuel is the Vice President of Social Media at Vision Critical, a customer intelligence software company.
- Theresa Moritz is a Senior Lecturer in English literature at the University of Toronto's Woodsworth College.
- Doug Belshaw researches online education. He's also the Web Literacy Lead for the Mozilla Foundation.
Have you ever faked cultural literacy? And if you have, what was your best fake?
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This segment was produced by The Current's Catherine Kalbfleisch and Marc Apollonio.