Personal Statement - Wellington Jiang
My first computer was a red Dell laptop. It was impractically large and slow even for its time, but what I remember most is that it had so many bookmarks in Internet Explorer that opening the bookmarks window took minutes. Liberated from knowledge of the finite nature of RAM and processing power, I kept pressing the bookmark button because I enjoyed savouring the internet, and the internet invited me to do so.
What I mean is that the inherent features of the internet allowed me to indulge in information in a manner unrivaled by any other medium. The fact that anyone can publish anything has staggering ramifications for both how and what we can learn. Search engines and digitised databases have transformed days of consulting with archivists and experts into perhaps an hour of Googling and reading. Wikipedia is so interconnected and expansive that going from one Wikipedia page to a completely unrelated other by only clicking hyperlinks has become a game.
Similarly, the internet has also made information about even the most obscure, niche or novel content widespread. The logistics and geopolitical ramifications of the Berlin airlift; editing a daytime photo so that it looks like nighttime in Photoshop; how abilities in Destiny are consistent with our current understanding of quantum physics; why Cold-War experiments with nuclear-powered aircraft failed; so much is readily available through the internet. Of course, one can sporadically pour over information without the internet - I’ve used my school’s library in a similar manner - but nothing rivaled the sheer convenience and richness of the internet. And while I never believed the internet could instill the critical thinking of formal education, I felt it was a superior repository of pure information.
But as the difficulty of what I learn increases and I reflect more critically on the internet and how I use it, I increasingly find limitations on what can be accomplished solely with a computer. One factor is plain: accurate information is more elusive the closer the subject matter is to the frontier of knowledge.
It’s the very inherent capabilities of the internet that drew me to it, though, that have most disillusioned my perspectives, in that the accessibility of the internet can also hinder intellectual progress. Any difficult subject demands rigorous, academic thinking, which entails critical reflection and discourse with others; the internet, however, encourages the metaphorical inverse of engagement: listening. Cooperation and collaboration are integral to academia, yet the internet, perhaps because it’s the harbinger of the age of information, encourages succumbing to what immediately appears correct. That’s not to say that I averted discourse or confounding information, but I often lacked the equilibrium of both engaging and absorbing demanded by higher learning, which manifested in various ways.
When I built my desktop, I spent a year researching and planning for the components I wanted. Dazzled by advertising and videos, I thought it wise to buy a large full tower case. Now I have an oversized case, and actual, obvious problems like poor cooling were overlooked. From not trying academic competitions to belatedly finding out I like hard rock, the list of opportunities I regret missing because of how I use the internet would be exhaustive and ongoing.
The internet has enabled me to learn and accomplish so much. But, through reflection and the people around me, I discovered that overreliance has an unsustainable cost I’m still defraying. I don’t regret overloading my laptop with bookmarks. But I now realise that absorbing, at the expense of engaging, is as unsustainable a doctrine for learning as excessive bookmarking is to a computer.