Is “Google Making Us Stupid?” Is the web making us “shallow?” My students say “no.”
BGSU students argue that the web is making us smarter via VoiceThread.
BGSU students argue that the web is making us smarter via VoiceThread.
Another interesting challenge to Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” this time from Steven Johnson writing for the New York Times.
Countering the popular arguments of Nicholas Carr (The Shallows, Is Google Making Us Stupid?) without mentioning him by name, author and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker explains why new media are not making us stupid after all in a great new op-ed piece for the New York Times.
Far from breeding shallowness, Pinker notes that the rise of information technology has fueled rapid scientific progress and helped reinvigorate and democratize the arts and humanities, writing:
For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest.
While Pinker acknowledges the Web comes with infinite opportunities for distraction, he essentially says, “don’t panic.” A few simple self-regulation strategies like ignoring the cell phone off at the dinner table and turning of Twitter and e-mail notifications when engaged in deep work can eliminate most of the negative side-effects of tech use (which, Pinker suggests, have been overhyped anyway.)
He concludes:
The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.
Read the full article here.
