is Google making us stupid: a discussion that goes on and on

Last week an essay was posted in Campus Technology, a journal I read regularly. It responded to an essay published last summer in The Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr that received wide attention. Its title was pretty compelling:  Is Google Making Us Stupid?

So I did what I often do when I run into a discussion in print that raises theoretical and neuroscientific issues, I sent an email to my sons who are in the business to take on such issues. And, as often happens when they respond, I get challenged to think more about this than I ever would have without being in such a dialogue. As a result I reread the Carr with a critical eye that its depth deserves, and found that I appreciated his concern that was the occasion for the essay, but saw that he, like many of us, starts running with his arguments when he gets in the groove, and logic can take a back seat. I know when I get enamoured to a concept, it can take on a life of its own...

In his essay, Carr argues that Nietzsche transitions later in his life to a (perhaps more trivial) form of writing, but I don't think either he or his source take into consideration what happens when a person ages. The reason that he needed the typewriter was because his eyesight was failing. What about his thinking process? Could that be decaying as well? I know from personal experience the continual changes in my views, values, and expressions continue to surprise me--in some ways that make me sad because I see clearly that I'm not the man I used to be. It's not all erosion, but there is that, certainly--especially in the physical realm, just like Nietzsche's eyes.

In the same way, his observations about how clocks have robbed us of living by being aware of our senses and instead are forcing us (I think not!) to attend to the abstraction of time as the clock presents it misses the simple fact that mankind has been living by times and seasons since the beginning: the sun rises, we get up; the sun sets, we settle down and build a fire to cook dinner over.

Upon what does Carr base his dread that in Google's world there is no contemplation or ambiguity? Just because he quotes one of Google's founders (Larry Page) on the topic of the benefit he believes would accrue with "all the world's information directly attached to your brain" making us better off doesn't necessarily mean the elimination of shades of gray. There is no end to ambiguity in the results of a Google search!

Not that I don't agree with his assessment that Page's goal of humanity being better off with all the world's information connected directly to our minds is something dreadful; he sees that "it suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized." Carr is right to sound the alarm about such an impoverished perspective--although I see him manufacturing much of the alarm: it may not necessarily be a right conclusion from the heart and mind of Mr. Page.

The response from Trent Batson brings a wonderful idea into the light: that Carr's fear (truly a lament, as Sam puts it in his email) of the end of an era--the end of the Book--need not be such a terrible thing, as the printed page and writing aren't being lost as much as they are developing with the new technology that informs new opportunity. The development is ironically in the direction of even more ancient oral traditions and patterns, Baston says.

Since Adam hasn't replied yet, I'll let Sam have the last word today: 

The final point I'd like to make, and the one that really calls for serious study is the effect that the digital has had on the book. In the days of pen and ink, and through the days of the typewriter, there was such a thing as a manuscript that existed prior to the publication contract. Books were written before they were submitted to the editor. This is what is changing--publishing is now so cheap that it has become more speculative and the sheer volume of printed material has expanded alongside of and, really, because of the web. Amazon.com, after all dudes. So my opinion is that yes, digital technologies are affecting what and how we read, but it has more to do with writing than with reading.