Here’s an interesting article I stumbled across:
Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr
The article describes how the internet is changing the way we think. It provides a current example of how literacy may have changed the way we thought in the past.
The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.†Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.†But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.
The above paragraph caught my attention because I’ve noticed how physicists have recently begun describing the universe in terms of “information” rather than “matter and mechanical processes” as they have in the past. Which is an excellent example of how our technologies effect the way we perceive the world.
Carr mentions Socrates’ arguments against literacy, and many people’s arguments against the printing press and then agrees that they were right. But then he claims that the advantages of these technologies have outweighed their disadvantages. We really can’t know, though, because we’ve been so immersed in a culture of literacy we can only imagine the way people may have once perceived the world. These technologies have been most advantageous for those near the top of the pyramid anyways.
The article also includes a critique of our cultures penchant to try to quantify everything.
Don’t mind my poor summary, my thought processes are definitely a product of the internet. :’(
–Rob