I find the notion that the Internet is making us dumb a paradox in which the many different facets of the issue culminate to create a whirlwind of confusion. I tend to disagree on the fact that the Internet is making us “dumb”. It may be making us lazier, or fatter, but not dumber. The argument that the easily accessible wealth of knowledge available on the Internet is corrupting our brains and in turn causing idiocy seems a little extreme. The underlying problem is not whether the Internet is making us dumb, because the capacity of the human brain will never change, it’s how the Internet is changing the way we view and store knowledge. Nicolas Carr, writes in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”
The Internet has not changed our mental capacity, merely the way we process information. But, hasn’t changing technology always done that throughout history? The written word changed the way we stored knowledge, and with every advance in technology since that point has increased the efficiency in which knowledge is spread. In addition to the way we stored knowledge, these advances changed the way we view knowledge. We’ve become increasingly ADD and this due in part to the medium in which we view, and document our lives. In the past the human brain has been compared to work like a clock, now we say the human brain works like a computer. So, in reflection, if anything the Internet is making us smarter, not dumber. It may be changing the way we think, but who can say this is a bad thing? I guess time will tell.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think you are spot on on this topic. Although our minds may be working differently, it's not all bad. We're becoming better able to handle multiple tasks (although one of the articles said we don't really multitask - we just spend less time on one thing) and also our thinking isn't so point a to point b to point c, it's more a to c to b, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteI had my first cell phone in 1995. The darn thing was as big as a VCR and did not have any memory saving capabilities to store any phone numbers. My second cell phone could store up to 30 phone numbers. Up until maybe 2003, I remembered all my contact information using my own methods of memory enabling devices that are unique to me. For example, I would associate events, dates, and numbers with people. I would remember the first three numbers of everyone’s phone number and associate the last four digits to an event date or give it some sort of significance. If for example the last four digits were 1941, I would associate it with the U.S. joining WWII. I don't do that anymore, yet I still remember the home phone numbers of childhood friends who I don't even call anymore or call them on their cell phones because they no longer live with their parents. My point is that technology today does enable us to have access to more information than ever before but I don't think it necessarily make us any smarter. I don't think it is making us dumber either though. I think it is simply making us think differently. My only fear is what happens if this technology fails us in one way or another one of these days. Maybe we shouldn't become too reliant on it and still incorporate some of our old methods or doing things in our lives.
ReplyDelete