"Stupid is as Stupid Does"

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" is an article that asks a relevant question particularly when relating it to the ever-changing technologies of our time. At its basic findings, the article insinuates that the human brain functions according to the technology that is being utilized at the time. For example, Friedrich Nietzche's typewriter allowed him to communicate through typing because his failing vision curtailed his ability to write using pen and paper. According to a composer friend of his, this inevitably changed his style of prose to which Nietzche agreed, "You are right, our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." The findings of the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler reaffirmed that Nietzche's prose, "changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style."

Another relevant example that is presented in the article is the mechanical clock, which came into use in the 14th century. The historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford explains that the clock "disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences." The frame work that divided time became "the point of reference for both action and thought." Basically, the clock's methodical ticking allowed for the scientific mind to flourish but it took away the ability to listen to one's senses. That is, the clock decides when it’s "appropriate" to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, or even to think. In order to escape from my sometimes overwhelming and constraining everyday reality, when on a vacation I don't wear a watch or carry a cell phone. I find myself for the first day or so still glancing at my bare wrist and I swear that I hear my cell phone ring tone when the cell phone is no where in the vicinity. This confirms two things for me. One, we have become slaves to the technology we have grown accustomed to. After reading this article the second thing that was confirmed which I have always suspected to be true but never encountered evidence to support is that our brains function according to the "intellectual technologies" that we surround our selves with.

Fredrick Winslow Taylor's studies of the choreographed mechanization of workers to produce maximum speed, efficiency, and output was adopted by the Industrial Revolution and still is in existence today in all aspects of manual labor and remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing today. At is basics, Winslow's system has restructured not only industry but society as a whole declaring that, "In the past the man has been first, in the future the system must be first." With the growing power of computers in our lives today, Taylor's system has begun to encompass the realm of the human mind as well. The Internet is constantly being changed and in the process changing the way information is collected and transmitted to become as efficient as possible. Our minds too are being transformed to work in a way that is in line with this changing technology.

Google's mission is to "systemize everything", to organize information and make it accessible and useful for widespread consumption. Furthermore, research is being done to create artificial intelligence to supplement or even replace our brains. I am reminded of a question my uncle, who coincidentally is named after the man who discovered algebra, used to ask me when I was a kid. He used to ask which is smarter the human brain or the calculator? I would look at him puzzled before he would answer by saying that the human mind created the calculator. A light bulb would go off in my head and I would think, "of course!" Somehow, I don't believe that neither his question nor his answer is as simple when applying it to computers and the Internet. Are we capable or creating technology that is smarter than us or is the technology we are creating shaping our minds to adapt to a new world order of consuming and producing knowledge? I think this is the question the article should be asking? Time will tell I suppose. But to humor Nicholas Carr and attempt to answer his question, "Is Google making us stupid?" I don't know if it is making us stupider or smarter because I don't believe those concepts are easily measured. One thing I believe it is doing is exposing us to an enormous amount of knowledge at a pace unrivaled in history, whether useless or useful I will leave for you to decide.