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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?"
This sounds so much like old teachers fretting over the use of calculators in math class.
In some ways, the scale of it is different, and it will be interesting to see how a kid born in 1995 thinks differently at 30 than one born in 1975, but still.
The net gives us all of the knowledge of humanity at our fingertips. It frees us from thinking about facts and gives us more time for abstract thinking and problem solving. At least for those of us who remember a time before google. Maybe a child born today really will be made dumb by google.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
Wish I had access to the original Atlantic Monthly article, although all I could get at was the blog. Anyone else find a link to the original source?
... or perhaps it's merely a desire to have access to information just in time?
The internet (and to a lesser extent, Google) could be making us stupid
There is so much information out there, it's rapidly becoming impossible for me to read "all the classics" in my leisure time. So the answer is to make a machine do it and just access the information just in time.
I don't know if it's making us stupider or merely more boring or even, perhaps, more effective at a specialized skill while lacking breadth?
If it's making us stupid you should at least be able to provide evidence that we are worse at academics than we have been prior to the internet. I'm sorry but claiming the youth are no longer interested in the media that mattered to prior generations just doesn't cut it.
I'm sure I'll bitch that my son doesn't read every Philip K. Dick book or Ray Bradbury short story when I'm long in the tooth. I think it would be unfair to claim that makes him stupid, however.
My work here is dung.
On the one hand, Google is reducing my desire to learn. When I can just look it up at any moment, I'm not really trying to memorize it.
On the other hand, Google has brought me into contact with exponentially more information than I would have otherwise had. Pre-internet, we just used to believe the person deemed most knowledgeable on the topic. Post-internet, we now look stuff up to settle disputes of knowledge. In fact, some of the stuff we all 'knew' then was wrong.
If any of this information is 'sticking' we're probably smarter because of it.
I dunno... the internet is a source of information (and admittedly often misinformation). How and what you do with that is up to you. I like to think google has made me smarter. It's allowed me to study after the facts things my doctor has said that I may not have fully understood. Instead of buying a book to get a beef stroganof recipe, I now read a half dozen of them online to distill what is the essence of beef stroganof. When my daughter asks me what sound a moose makes, instead of "I don't know", it's now "let's find out!" I use google multiple times daily. No, I'm not stupider for it, and yes I still read books.
I had forgotten how tedious it was to do research before there was google and other library databases until I saw the 25th anniversary showing of WarGames on AMC last week. The kid is tryign to break into an account and researches the account-holder's in the library life for clues. I spent many of a college evening in the library during my college years doing that.
I think its much more important with what you do with your raw material afterwards than how painful it was to obtain the materials. I'd prefer a studing to write a novel critical review of 2 or 3 major conflicting sources rather than some weak regurgitation (or direct copy) of a large number of sources.
My blog
If nobody remembers the "facts" anymore, then how is it to be judged that the "facts" in the intarwebs are true? .. Of course, history has always been written in biased fashion, so I guess there's no change there. The sad thing is that Internet, at least theoretically, provides us the opportunity to change this; having differing views of history on the record more easily.
Whether that will happen or not, remains to be seen, of course.
On the contrary the internet makes knowing 'facts' irrelevant, no one has to memorise information anymore.
:)
Right, and plus the "facts" are changing at such a rapid pace, that knowing them in your memory is pointless when you can get the current "facts" with a few keystrokes.
I heard of some nit out there that didn't think that Einstein was that smart because he didn't know how many feet were in a mile. Einstein's response, "I can look that up".
So, by the nit's logic, we are all as smart as Einstein now
A person who remembers a lot doesn't necessarily have the ability to put concepts together and form new ones.
Oddly enough, without the ability to memorise a bunch of boring facts, it's impossible to derive a concept. Or be able to evaluate the validity of the concepts.
I don't care whether it's rote memorisation of multiplication tables by grade schoolers, memorisation of names and dates for high schoolers studying history (or whatever they call it today), or a shitload of Latin by those studying some of the sciences, without being able to do the work, and actually doing it, you can't possibly progress to understanding anything.
For most, I guess, that's too hard, especially when Google not only provides such a convenient excuse, but also proxies your own knowledge so nothing is ever required or expected of you.
The internet is NOT making us smarter - it's simply making the underlying truth more evident:
The ability to successfully process and analyze information is far more rare than the ability to regurgitate facts. Now the the internet is decreasing the need to memorize mounds of facts, the people who got classified as smart simply because they were able to memorize gobs and gobs of useless facts are no longer as valued. So we're left with the subset who could actually process, analyze and synthesize information to begin with.
Good points.
Here's the old adage: You know how stupid the average person is? Statistically, half the people are more stupid than that.
Google might shape stupidity in new and different ways, just like literacy did back in an earlier day. But whether most people are saying "I heard it in the marketplace", "I read it in the newspaper", or "I googled it" doesn't much matter: the intelligence divide will continue to separate those who make decisions based on what some authorities say from those who make decisions through their own critical thinking.
The important thing is whether Google is becoming a catalyst for changing the compounds of administratium that we all have to deal with. The amount of administratium in the local universe appears to be constant for human scale time periods, but if Google is increasing the rate at which administratium oxides ("corporate rust") are converted to more reactive compounds of the element, then the upper quartile of intelligent people need to take notice, and make appropriate adjustments to the strategies and tactics that they use to guide the administrators.
I think of the internet as one gigantic brain. As your finger touches a hotplate for the first time, you mentally register "hey, that's hot, don't touch." As someone posts, say, a recipe online for the first time, the collective (or at least those who find that information relevant) will be able to recall it using its prefrontal cortex known as "Google" whenever they want. I think that we have much more access to knowledge now. That doesn't mean we're smarter, but that we can allocate our memory for what we feel is more relevant. In the process, we leave the (subjectively) less important material online where we can search any time we want.
That's part of the problem. You don't actually learn anything through memorization. I always hated history in school, although I would often read about it in my free time. The difference was when I was reading myself I was learning about why people did the things that they did, whereas in school I was engaging in the bulk memorization of time-lines and events, which was worthless. It's kind of like the people that will memorize the core library methods of a programming language, but can't code very well. It's not portable and doesn't do a whole lot for you.
If memorization were de-emphasized in education perhaps the ability to quickly research subjects to form thoughts and opinions on them would be seen as something valuable. Isn't that what learning, and being smart, are all about?
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Google can encourage mental habits where people can talk about subjects that they do not understand.
This was covered in one of Feynman's semi-autobiographical books, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! There's a bit where he goes to Brazil. There, in the science classes, the professor would call on the students, and a student would stand and deliver the answer right out of the textbook. This bothered Feynman somehow, so one day he's looking out the window at the sun glinting beautifully off the bay, and asks the students to point out an example of polarized light. Reflected light is polarized, but the students were unable to use their memorized knowledge. Feynman's conclusion was that the science professors weren't teaching science, but public speaking and elocution.
Vernor Vinge also covers this in Rainbows End. The protagonist, a revived Pulitzer-Prize winning poet from the old days, notes that the younger folks seemed to have an inability to really synthesize knowledge and understand anything, though they could instantly look anything up through their wearable computers and talk about it.
I'm not so sure that just because the facts are easily accessible, they make us smarter because we don't have to memorize them.
If we don't know what the actual facts are, because we didn't memorize them, then how can we know that the "facts" we use are actually accurate?
This means that we might actually become stupider because we are relying on third parties to do the hard work for us.
People are naturally lazy and, this only makes it easier for them to be lazy and blame someone else when they get their facts wrong. Keep in mind, not all people fit this mold and will actually try to interpret the data they've found, but I think the majority will just become dumber because they'll be waiting for someone else to figure it out for them (think Idiocracy).
I think the number of stupid people with access to information and education is increasing at a rate greater than average intelligence. People are also learning differently because of the way we have access to information, and that is a smart thing to do. More scientists today with respect to their time read more than they spend time in lab. Were it not for so many books, let alone the internet, that would not be possible. There is also more to learn today than ever before. That doesn't mean scientists are doing less work, or any less smart; they are doing different work, and we can see the difference.
And in the same respect, I think more stupid kids are browsing 4chan, facebook, lolcats, and youtube that might otherwise be burning ants with magnifying glasses, sniffing glue, hitting their heads against walls for fun, and shooting the neighbors cat with a BB gun.
As the internet has brought a new type of democracy to information and education the world has changed. Smart people went to libraries, others went to the county fair (to quote Jeff Foxworthy). Now we all hang out together on the INTERTOOBS!!! GREAT!
It is better than it isn't.
I think the article is very short sighted, and ignorant to the way people learn and adapt with their technology. This possibly really reveals how ignorant 'smart' people are about those with lesser opportunity. I think a better perspective would be how we can see intellegence as a whole versus averages or medians. The internet has grown to include so many more people. Remember that the internet started with colleges and expanded into wealthy communities. We can now see just how poorly educated some of the country is. In the parts of the country that are cut off from technology, you will find AT LEAST as many people made up of sound bites. How many people do you know that only repeat one really bad joke, that is short, and poorly told? This was not something new that the internet created, they are just no longer naturally censored... And now they get their own website and a "Top 10" list on cracked.com
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Intelligence is not based on brute calculation.
What this means is, while someone might have a better memory than another person, if they don't know the difference between right and wrong because they have no ability to weigh their own actions, they'll aways be putting themselves into dumb situations no matter what they scored on their written tests and no matter what grade they got in school.
The point is, life is the true test. If you want your kids to be smart, teach them how to measure right from wrong decisions. This means you have to teach them critical thinking and how to weigh their actions against the consequences.
This is something many book smart people are not capable of doing. They might be able to calculate and do advanced math in their head, but if they lack reasoning ability, none of this will matter.
Rational choice theory/game theory is really the only kind of math that must be mastered if a person is to be successful.
That's why I try to climb to the top of the interpretation food chain, enumerated as follows from low to high:
- The article. Second hand recounting of the writers interpretation of fact, or an interpretation of the interviewee's knowledge. Skip it.
- The summary. A poster's alcohol-aided version of what they would have preferred to read as they looked over the article (or someone's summary of said article). Only useful as an indicator of the magnitude of the flame wa.. discussion to follow.
- The comments. Some user's interpretation of the situation, albeit of an unknown quality. Worth glancing at.
- The +5 comments. These have been interpreted by moderators and deemed worthy of consumption. Because I now know that moderators have said the comment is valuable, I am able to interpret it differently than the moderators themselves, adding value.
- The top of the chain: my thoughts. Because my thoughts are based on a weighted average of all the other sources (favoring the ones higher up the chain), they are guaranteed to be the result of the most interpretive thought available on the subject.
I am always careful to only lurk and never contribute, as that would allow someone to interpret my thoughts and thus lowering my position on the chain.This thread screams for a reference to King Thamus of ancient Egypt who once made the same arguments against the development of writing. He argued that writing would dumb humans down.
Read Plato's "The Phaedrus" for more on this.
http://www.units.muohio.edu/technologyandhumanities/plato.htm
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
On the contrary the internet makes knowing 'facts' irrelevant, no one has to memorise information anymore. It's the process of information interpretation that is becoming more important than the knowing of information.
The internet is making us smarter.
Agreed. The internet is a tool, whether it makes us smarter or dumber depends on the person who's using it. Before the internet, whoever was using encyclopedias or buying People magazine (or Larry Flint's Hustler, which had astonishingly good journalistic articles, BTW), is still doing so, only more efficiently.
Among many other things, the internet allows me to get dumb little details out of my mind, such as - "Who was such and such actor in what film?" I look it up in IMDb, and just like that, that nagging, distracting little detail is fully satisfied. And then, I've lost count on how many excellent BBC documentaries I've seen on Google Video, which I wouldn't have access to otherwise. It's the proverbial Library Of Alexandria, and then some.
There's always the danger of dumbing down, of course. I've made it a personal rule to never, ever use the internets, no matter how strong the temptation, to help me solve the NYT Sunday crossword, for example.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I knew someone was going to point that out! But, take it a step farther. Since (I assert) there is an effective minimum intelligence which few or no functioning humans fall below, and right above which a huge clump of the population resides--whereas there are likely to be lots of individual outliers on the high end of the intelligence spectrum--the distribution is probably skewed to the left. Thus _more_ than half of all people are stupider than average!