Is Google Making Us Stupid?

  I recently read This article which questions whether or not Google is hindering our minds as a society.  I have to respond by saying that this is just simply wrong.  different sure, but not in a bad way.

Back in the days of Socrates and Plato, when Humanity began to transition from an oral culture a written one the argument was held. "Writing will ruin man, because humans will no longer have to memorize anything." He was right, no longer do people memorize anything lengthy.  However, instead writing things down allowed us to look at longer strings of information objectively.

 Imagine having to remember all of this and still be able to work it out!

I actually heard this debate being discussed on NPR recently.  It was very interesting to hear both sides.  There was even a special guest who's family lives like it's the 1980's without internet or cell phones.  Blair McMillan spoke about having a closer connection with his family and enjoying the time they spend together more.  However, Blair also speaks at length about being disconnected from his extended family and friends when it comes to current events that he may find online.  

Back to the initial question though, is the internet making us stupid?  I have to say that it's highly unlikely, The article talks about readers skimming literature instead of reading the whole thing word for word.  While this may seem an unfortunate turn of events, i have to argue that i got the main idea of the article by skimming it.  In order to test this, I read it on paper and read it all after i had skimmed it online.

I skimmed it in about 5 or 7 minutes.  when i took the time to focus on reading it word for word it took me about 12-15 minutes.  while i had missed some key elements, I did have the main idea down.  and After the temptation of surfing the internet for stuff i found myself here  watching this:

I was able to watch the entire video (Something I found much easier to do than the sit down to read the whole article) and was able to spend that time learning many facts about different times in human history.  Instead of spending 15 minutes focused on one piece of writing where i had enough of the information from skimming it in 5.  I was able to skim the idea from the article in 5 then spend 10 minutes watching and learning other facts.  

However! because there were so many other videos on the channel covering so many different topics.  I lost myself in them and spend hours learning facts and seeing things I would have never seen without the internet.  That being said, in order to be completely honest I must say, I worked on this post while i was watching them and remember much more of the article off the top of my head than I do of the facts and opinions expressed on Vsauce.  

The debate regarding the effects the internet has on the human mind are still a long way away.  In the mean time, having access to resources like Vsauce and the wealth of knowledge they can hold put me firmly in the "the internet is making us smarter" column.

Camron,  

signing off.