If the Internet makes us stupid, will anyone notice?
July 28th, 2008 by Bill
I saw the headline, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and I thought, “Geez, I hope not. We’re stupid enough already.”
As evidence, we can look at some of the responses to the article. People seem to have their shorts in knots, on both sides, about our digital world. It’s either the great salvation of human life or the end of the world (less the four horsemen). Is the Internet evil or a force for good?
People have been engaged in this debate since the term “Internet” was coined and I don’t envision it petering out anytime soon. However, anytime I’ve looked at this debate it has always struck me as an utterly stupid one.
How can technology be good or bad, moral or immoral? Technology is not sentient (although the people working on artificial intelligence would like to make it so, and may even manage it one day). Technology is amoral. Indifferent.
And of course, there’s Hamlet’s observation, “… There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
How we use technology, and technology’s impact on us, now that might allow for qualifiers like “good” and “bad.”
When I read Nick Carr’s article it struck me that, rather than being a Luddite, he was simply asking the question and not necessarily putting a spin on it one way or the other, albeit he does mention his default position is to be skeptical, saying, “So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism.”
But if there is evidence that our brains are rewiring themselves, creating new connections and so on due to how we use technology (meaning, here, the Internet), surely it’s worthwhile to ask what is changing and what might its impact be?
If Carr and others are correct in their suggestion that “continuous partial attention” has an impact on reading, particularly deep reading and thinking, it also makes sense to ask what else is being gained or lost.
In almost every case, when something is lost, something is gained. The question here is, what is lost (if anything) and what is gained (if anything) and, if this can be determined, how does it balance out? Is it a good trade-off or a bad one?
Technology is not bad. Nor is it good.
We, on the other hand, are another thing altogether.
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