The Internet is making people dumber faster - By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

“At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we’ve ever had.”

To which I really must say, if you click on the link, you’re in danger of making his opinion into fact. What a pompous windbag. Is he one of the the guys that blamed the California energy crisis on the dot-coms? This load of crap is the usual geezer-pleasing criticism of a new or developing medium, a tactic lazy, lazy men resort to when they got nothing else to write about.

In fact, the culprit for what Friedman is all bent out of shape over is rumour and credulousness. But what seems to set him off is that someone from Indonesia has noticed what everyone in the US has known for years: Bill O’Reilly is a loudmouth twit. Of course, this takes Mr Friedman aback.

If he’d led with the well-known fact that Fox News is making people dumber faster I never would have felt the need to smack him around. Plus, isn’t that teevee? Well, you know, we’ve known for years that teevee makes people dumber faster.

No word on Freidman’s upcoming Blimp Week story.