Getting Dumber/Smarter

I tried not to be too biased reading the first article but it was terribly difficult. The title alone threw me off, “Does the internet make you dumber?” And I think the second article, “Does the internet make you smarter?” validated my bias considering how much more I liked and agreed with it.

I felt that the first article had a major contradiction that undercut its hypothesis. It made the claim that we were losing our ability to focus, an ability supposedly gained by years of reading books. Carr then made the claim that the brain quickly “remodels” to fit the way that it’s used. If the brain is so flexible, then it shouldn’t have any trouble learning to focus again. Also, if the brain is more suited (from an evolutionary perspective) to a less focused environment like the internet, then couldn’t it be more effective as a learning tool? Also, people can set themselves apart now purely by their ability to sift through large quantities of data and information on the internet and make a decision.  People adapt and learn to excel in their environment. This change and adaptation to the environment is not a sign that we are getting dumber.

I liked the second article but I was initially going to argue that Shirky based his argument too much on the movable type analogy. To me, comparing technology transformations that took place hundreds of years apart made for a rather weak argument. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how spot on he was. I think going into these articles I made little distinction between how knowledgeable and how smart someone was. For me and my group of friends, there’s no doubt that the internet makes us more knowledgeable. My roommates and I sit in our living room watching tv at night and inevitably have about 28 different arguments based on something that came up in a show. We search our iphones during commercials to find data to back up our arguments. These articles aren’t ALL at the highest intellectual level but there are a few high caliber arguments thrown in there. Years ago we would have had to go to the library to resolve these arguments or just sit there and argue ignorantly, and that happens if we left our phones in a different room. But at least most of the time now we can back up our argument with confirmation bias fueled facts.