大概至少有十年了吧,我曾批評一位朋友所屬的某大學之所謂醫學人文中心(?)之學生集體抄襲事件(全班似乎沒有一個乾淨),可怕之處不在於抄襲,亦不在於集體抄襲,而在於老師竟然得 ""求"" 學生不要抄,但學生偏偏還是要抄,老師只好繼續求,語氣哀怨楚楚可憐,只差沒有跪求哭求.

當時看到這事覺得很訝異,真是荒唐到極點,沒想到十年下來,這幾乎已是學生常態. 只要不是一字不漏地抄就不算抄. 學姐說,若要按照正常道德標準,恐怕全班都得當掉.我說我若是老師,全部當掉就全部當掉有什麼關係? 不但當掉,我還要全部移送法辦繩之以法,該退學就退學.

學姐說,若真的這樣做,台灣學生絕對馬上上網發動造謠抹黑攻擊與人身侮辱,討伐公敵.

我知道這些都是事實,我也知道台灣學生不能惹,問題是,這樣一種學生,你到底能教他什麼?或者說,他究竟是來學校幹什麼? 我常納悶,大學裏到底還有沒有人真的在唸書或曾經真的念過書?更不用說什麼十年寒窗那樣一種精神與熱情了.

愛台義和團團員們大概又會說什麼天下烏鴉一般黑,但事實不然,我見過各國學生,要找到像台灣學生這樣沒出息的一堆小表哥小表妹,恐怕還真難,可謂舉世罕見. 究竟他們是來學校幹嘛?

底下是一篇文章,講到整天靠網路求知的網路鬼的世界,是不是很扭曲很封閉? 人們使用網路,卻對網路之為物似乎無絲毫警戒.

學生們不但抄,而且是抄網路google之後排在最前面的那一篇. 以前抄襲還難一些,還得手工抄半天,現在只是剪貼或下載.

維根斯坦要求來上課的學生都必須先私下見個面,確定對方不是來玩來睡午覺或來啃雞腿的,他才肯讓對方參與課程. 這不是擺架子,而是一個對於哲學無絲毫熱情的人,他實在完全沒有必要來課堂上浪費彼此的時間.

陳真

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/30/google-polluting-internet

Google is polluting the internet

The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore


Micah White

guardian.co.uk,

Saturday 30 October 2010

Google advertising … 'We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.' Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

An advertising agency has monopolised, disorganised, and commercia1ised the largest library in human history. Without a fundamental rethinking of the way knowledge is organised in the digital era, Google's information coup d'état will have profound existential consequences.


Google was originally conceived to be a commercial-free search engine. Twelve years ago, in the first public documentation of their technology, the inventors of Google warned that advertising corrupts search engines. ""[W]e expect that advertising-funded search engines,"" Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote, ""will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."" And they condemned as particularly ""insidious"" the sale of the top spot on search results; a practice Google now champions.


Under the sway of CEO Eric Schmidt, Google currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. Following its $3.1bn acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007, Google has became the world's largest online advertising company. With ad space on 85% of all internet sites, upwards of 98% of Google's revenue comes solely from polluting online knowledge with commercial messages. In the gleeful words of Schmidt, ""We are an advertising company."" Google is not a search engine; it is the most powerful commercia1ising force on the internet.


Every era believes their way of organising knowledge is ideal and dismisses prior systems as nonsensical. Academic libraries in the US use subject categorisation derived from Sir Francis Bacon's 17th-century division of all knowledge into imagination, memory and reason. Yet who today, aside from one or two exceptions, would try to organise the internet using a handful of categories? For a generation trained to use Google, this approach seems outmoded, illogical or impossible. But modern search engines, which operate by indexing instead of categorising, are also fundamentally flawed.


Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift foresaw the cultural danger of relying on indexes to organise knowledge. He believed index learning led to superficial thinking. Swift was right and a growing of teachers and public intellectuals are coming to the realisation that search engines encourage skimming, light reading and trifling thoughts. Whereas subject classification creates harmony and encourages serendipity; indexes fracture knowledge into snippets making us stupid. Thanks to Google, the superficia1ity of index learning is infecting our culture, our society, and our civilisation.


Google did not invent the index. That honour goes to the 500 monks led by Hugh of St Cher who compiled the first concordance of the bible in 1230. Nor was Google the first to dream of indexing all of human knowledge. Henry Wheately had the idea in 1902 for a ""universal index"". And Google was not the first to cynically dump advertisements into the search-engine index. What makes Google unique is the extent to which it has, oblivious to the consequences, made a business out of commercia1ising the organisation of knowledge.


The vast library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that many people claim not to notice them anymore. Ads line the top and right of the search results page, are displayed next to emails in Gmail, on our favourite blog, and beside reportage of anti-corporate struggles. As evidenced by the tragic reality that most people can't tell the difference between ads and content any more, this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact.


The omnipresence of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. Seneca's exhortations to live a frugal life are surrounded by commercia1s for eco-holidays. The parables of Jesus are mere fodder for selling bamboo flooring. The juxtaposition of advertisements with wisdom neutralises the latter. The prevalence of commercial messages traps us in the marketplace. No wonder it has become nearly impossible to imagine a world without consumerism. Advertising has become the distorting frame through which we view the world.


There is no system for organising knowledge that does not carry with it social, political and cultural consequences. Nor is an entirely unbiased organising principle possible. The trouble is that too few people realise this today. We've grown complacent as researchers; lazy as thinkers. We place too much trust in one company, a corporate advertising agency, and a single way of organising knowledge, automated keyword indexing.


The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore. The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatise the index, commercia1ise the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder. We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.


In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a promise: ""We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."" Now it is up to us to realise the dream of a non-commercial paradigm for organising the internet. Only then will humanity find the wisdom it needs to deal with the many crises that threaten our shared future.