Culture: June 2008 Archives
Over at The Atlantic Monthly, a provocative piece by Nicholas Carr titled "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" discusses how the web has changed the way we interact with information. He argues that the hyper-multitasking of the Internet has made people less introspective, reflective and thoughtful. Rather than simply blame the Internet, Carr also argues that the way we use the technologies is having a profound affect on how we think and act.As usual, Carr is onto something. And I think this quote in the article describing a conversation that Nietzsche had with a friend about the use of a typewriter changing his writing, captures it perfectly.
“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
But Carr also misses some important factors that should have been discussed in his article. Firstly, these changes aren't anything new. Each time a transformative piece of technology enters our lives, it influences our cognitive abilities in unusual ways. The discovery of the printing press changed the nature of knowledge forever (and us too) as did more recent and less dramatic inventions like the typewriter, the radio, the television and now the Internet. Is there something dramatically different about the Internet?
Well, I believe there is. It is not that we have immense amounts of information at our finger tips. Most people aren't journalists like Carr and that information doesn't matter as much. The difference is that we're connected with each other so much more. Our lives are a perpetual dinner party. We're in multiple conversations, continuously moving between circles of friends and the bar. Activity on the Internet resembles how we digest and exchange information when we mingle at parties.
The point being that it is a dinner party because we're connected to each other. Its not Google or the Internet that's making us stupid, it is the fact that we maybe spending more time at virtual dinner parties than we should.
Some of the more controversial responses to Carr's article include:
