Is Google Making Us Stupid?

mjasay writes "Is Google making us stupid? Following a growing body of research within neuroscience, Carr argues that as we use the Web 'we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.' This sounds great: Who wouldn't want to have the 'recall' capacity of Google? But, as Carr writes: 'The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. ... The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net's image.' In other words, as we 'go online' in increasing numbers and to an increasing degree, are we losing our ability to think coherently and deeply, preferring instead to process byte-sized information quickly, regurgitate 140-character 'tweets,' and skim thought? Is the concern overblown, or are we becoming the Web that we created?"

Comments

On CNet

[truthsearch]

Ironically this article is on CNet, which is full of "byte-sized information", "regurgitated tweets", and "skim thought." Just another sensationalist article on a site that claims to be above the problem while actually promoting it.

Re:Both

[Ranger96]

It only makes you more of what you really are.

Sounds like cocaine.

Robin Williams: It intensifies your personality. But what if you're an asshole? That is a Bill Cosby quote (from "Himself") - looked it up on Google!

Re:Both

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Here's the old adage: You know how stupid the average person is? Statistically, half the people are more stupid than that.

Statistically, this is true only if: (a) you're using "average" to denote median, rather than mean, or (b) intelligence follows a perfectly symmetrical distribution. Since "average" in casual usage generally denotes mean, and since many natural phenomena don't follow symmetrical distributions*, "half the people are stupider than average" probably isn't true.

You could have Googled this information, you know. ;)

*And yes, I know IQ is defined so that it follows a normal distribution -- thus it's symmetrical by definition. For this reason alone, it's unlikely to correspond to the actual distribution of intelligence in the population.

Re:Feynman and Vernor Vinge

[jzuccaro]

The story is called "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov. You can find it here Here is the Wikipedia entry Give it a read! It is worth it and very relevant to this subject.

Re:Both

[locofungus]

Here's the old adage: You know how stupid the average person is? Statistically, half the people are more stupid than that.

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

"This study also enabled us to explore Prediction 3, that incompetent individuals fail to gain insight into their own incompetence by observing the behaviour of other people."

"[After seeing the answers of others] If anything, bottom-quartile participants tended to raise their already inflated self-estimates, although not to a significant degree"

The fundamental problem is that, even with the right answers in front of them, the incompetent are unable to distinguish the right from the wrong answers. What the internet brings to the incompetent is AN answer so now they THINK they know.

The competent can, of course, filter the wheat from the chaff.

I especially like the concluding remarks from that paper. "That worry is that this article may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication. Let us assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly."

Tim.