Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Shallow Hal

The article of interest by Nicholas Carr brings up some interesting points. I found it ironic that he argued that Google and the internet have ebbed away at his attention span yet one had to intensely concentrate to follow his arguments. I found his points overstated and I felt bogged down by minutia as I attempted to follow his train of thought.
His purpose was to demonstrate that the internet and Google have changed the way we think to the degree even that our chemical and neurological make-up have been altered. It is true that we are well into the internet/information age. The amount of information we are exposed to increases on a daily basis. 30 years ago it would have taken several weeks to bring the amount of research to bear on any given topic that now takes us about 15 minutes performing a Google search and clicking on hyperlinks. This fact is irrefutable. Within a year we could be potentially exposed to more information than people in the pre-internet age were exposed to in a lifetime.  The reality is that we still have the same amount of time available to us in one day. Therefore, it is necessary for us to absorb information in manageable sound bytes. However, I am not convinced that this phenomenon is changing the way we think or as the author states in his title, "making us stupid."
I would certainly classify this article as academic. He backs up his points with well-researched references to history and even philosophy. It seems that he assumes that he is addressing a well-informed and educated audience. There is no doubt that he is intelligent, educated and quite comfortable swimming through academic water yet he is still human. Humans are subject to bias and clouding their research with emotion thus losing objectivity. I do appreciate the fact that he does admit his proclivities when he says, "maybe I am just a worrywart."
I concur. I think he is erring on the paranoid side. His point is overstated. Certainly, Google may be coming up with algorithms that streamline our searches that best fit our needs but this falls short of turning us into non-thinking automatons. No matter how smart, powerful, or omniscient Google and/or the internet is they cannot erase the human brain's capacity to sustain rational thought. Many would say that this is the very thing that makes us human and separates us from robots and animals.

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