In Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nicholas Carr states an incessant fear that the Internet is breaking down his mind and that of others. He states that the web is a great resource, which gives him the ability to easily find information that “once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries”. However, beyond this Carr claims that the Internet has taught our brains to move at a faster pace, meaning we no longer have the attention span for reading long books in depth or even reading articles without skimming.

Jamais Cascio makes a contrary statement in his own article Get Smarter. While agreeing with Carr about the short-lived ADD people are developing, he claims it’s a phase, that “Google isn’t the problem; it’s the beginning of a solution”. We have survived and been changed by ice ages, the invention of writing, the printing press. We have evolved into what we are today, who says that’s a bad thing? The Internet is only another thing added to keep us evolving; only this time, we have tools to help us.

Although I agree with Carr up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that the Internet has made us stupid. Cascio made me see that Carr is seemingly stuck in the present, not looking at how the Internet will motivate and changed our ways so that we may not need to take the time to get through War and Peace; he has overlooked the fact that there are new innovations everyday. Cascio takes the issue of our current short-term attention span and moves it into the future. He looks at how we will overcome our issues today with the technology that we either possess or will one day possess. He observes what human behavior has done in the past and applies it to our future, leaving Carr behind in his dust.