The Changing Nature of Humanity and Technology "Reworked"

Technology is changing at a rapid pace, marking the dawn of a new form media, the Internet. It has become a daily fixture in many of our lives. Just think about how many times a day we stop to Google something, check our Facebook profile, or play online games. In discussions of the Internet, a controversial issue has been whether it is in fact making us smarter, or stupid. While some critics of the Internet argue that the availability and accessibility of online sources is detrimental to our ability to concentrate, I believe that the Internet is in fact beneficial to our intellect. It is without question that the internet is a pathway to a new evolution in how humans think, but it is whether we are willing to adapt to that change that will ultimately decide how the internet affects our lives.

In the 2008 article Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nicholas Carr admits that the internet is useful, but states that it also limits our ability to concentrate for long periods of time, stating that is hard for some to read long novels such as War and Peace anymore. This is because the internet makes information easy to access and condensed. By focusing on the inability for people to focus on long fictional texts, Carr overlooks the fact that there is not much usefulness in reading them and they are in fact, just long and boring. Why waste time cramming things into our heads that could easily be looked up through Google? Instead, that mental capacity could be used to innovate and generate new ideas to improve our world.

In the 2009 article Get Smarter, Jamais Cascio asserts that the internet is just one step forward in the millennia-long augmentation of our thinking ability. He claims that the increasing complexity of media has actually made us smarter through something called “fluid intelligence.” Unlike memorizing facts, fluid intelligence is the ability to find meaning in confusing things, which could actually improve our capacity for contemplative thinking rather than destroy it, as Carr suggests. I agree with Cascio that the internet has changed our way of thinking for the better and that we will continue to augment how we think in the future. As Carr states, Socrates was against the development of writing, but did not foresee the benefits it had on the expansion of human knowledge. The same could be said of the internet today.

In the 2010 Wall Street Journal article Does the Internet Make You Smarter or Dumber? Clay Shirky argues that, as with every type of media, there are both beneficial ideas and worthless ones. He compares our current digital revolution to the advent of printed word in the 16^th century, when written works mainly consisted of erotic material and pulp fiction. By the 17^th century however, printed word had an incredible benefit to society and how we think. Shirky says that open source projects such as Wikipedia and PatientsLikeMe are already providing us with such benefits. I agree with Shirky on the fact that the time before the widespread popularity of the internet actually involved less reading and writing, as television was the main form of popular media. “We actually spent a lot more time watching ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ than reading Proust,” Shirky states.

Technology will continue to grow and change the same way it has for thousands of years and, as we have in the past, we will contain to change along with it. It is human nature to adapt to new technology and ways of thinking and despite what Carr argues, I agree with Cascio that humans are “self-developing” and the increasing complexity of media will bring human evolution into a new stage of development. In the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell, the protagonist goes through a rather “life changing” event, finding her mind fused with an AI that calls itself “a life-form born in the sea of information". In the final moments, she stares off into the horizon and remarks, “and where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.”