Does Google Make Us Smarter?

[n2doc]

The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world."
Hal Varian, Google, chief economist


Respondents to the fourth "Future of the Internet" survey , conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project were asked to consider the future of the internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovations that will occur.

Among the issues addressed in the survey was the provocative question raised by eminent tech scholar Nicholas Carr in a cover story for the Atlantic Monthly magazine in the summer of 2009: "Is Google Making us Stupid?"

Carr argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting his capacity to concentrate.

"I'm not thinking the way I used to," he wrote, in part because he is becoming a skimming, browsing reader, rather than a deep and engaged reader. "The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.... If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,' we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture."


more:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/-does-google-make-us-smarter-new-research-says-yes.html

[ixion]

1. Yeah, I've noticed that I skim more than I used to

and I find that seeping into my novel reading. When I catch myself doing it, I go back and pick up where I started skimming and force myself to read it and engage.

[damyank913]

2. Definitely not dumber...

Although I had a hard time with the Dewey Decimal System last month. But on a positive note, I kicked ass on trivial pursuit last weekend...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. There was an American Scientist article from a year or so ago.

It was about how the needless use of conventions slows down progress.

A great example used was the Korean alphabet. The Koreans invented a phonetic alphabet several hundred years ago but never got around to adopting it over a ridiculously antiquated Chinese alphabet until the 20th century. The scholars who neglected to adopt the new and improved phonetic alphabet kept saying things like "well, the Mongols don't use the Chinese alphabet, and they're barbarians. This new system is much easier, but it will teach students to be sloppy and they won't study as hard.

Basically, they sounded like this guy.

Fuck yeah, google makes us smarter. And wikipedia moreso.