Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Is Google Making Us Stupid? response: The portion of the essay that I choose to comment on is as follows “In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.””

         

   I agree with Carr’s metaphoric example above to an extent. The use of easily accessible knowledge on the internet has made people slightly stupider in the sense that they no longer have to rely on memory for knowledge and the form that this knowledge is presented to them is in shorter bursts. Socrates above thought that written word would or change the learning process by which everyone was accustomed to, and I think the internet and today’s technology is doing that as well as effecting memory more. One aspect Carr doesn’t touch on at all is smartphones, which I think have equally as big of an influence on the mind as internet itself. Instead of remembering phone numbers, birthdays, addresses, and directions, you can just look it up in seconds by the tips of your fingers. Instead of relying elementary level taught grammar and spelling, it can be looked up at lightning speeds. This definitely has an effect on the human memory.