Nicholas Carr’s article, Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?, has raised somewhat of a controversy among the those involved in the learning community. We have just completed a week long debate on the topic and now need to speak our minds independently of the assigned for and against positions. Strictly speaking to Carr’s title of the article is the internet making us stupid, is the internet somehow reaching in and removing cognitive ability from our brains? Maybe so, not in the sense that what knowledge is there is being removed but that we are becoming less able to focus our attention to engage in deep thought or contemplation.
One of the analogies that is sometimes used in this argument is that of the printing press. When the printing press was invented it was the internet of its day. It had the ability to put information into the hands of the populous that they had never before had access to. The printing press was theorized by the “intelligent” people to be a terrible thing because the populous would not know what to do with the information, would not understand the information and that basically the vast amount of information might make them stupid. Interestingly enough, while the Bible was one of the first things printed on the printing press so was a LOT of pornography. Not that I feel pornography is necessarily bad, there are those that would make the claims about the publishing of such content being downright evil, to each his own. The printing press also led the world to the Protestant Reformation, something a lot of Catholics would suggest is downright evil and lot of Protestants might suggest is not. To the overall point, few people today would suggest that the printing press did anything other than improve upon the intelligence of the populous.
The real question comes down to, Is the printing press responsible for all of this or is it just another tool that Man can use to further his purposes? Which then brings us to the Internet, is the internet just another tool for Man to further his purposes? Sure it is, but it is the age of the technology in comparison to the age of the printing press technology that I believe is the more relevant discussion. Sure in time the printing press has proved to be more good than evil, more a builder of intelligence than any tool Man has created. The Internet by comparison is a very young technology, it is still finding its way.
Does the rapid access to lots of data, flashing pop ups, and allures of immediate information affect some people’s ability to focus, certainly the data proves it. How then were a group of students able to focus on this debate, research answers, and learn a new technology for the purposes of a grade, because we were motivated to do so. It seems then that motivation playing a huge part in determining if one has the ability to focus on the task at hand. I can focus because I need to, I want to , or I have to, but if I’m not motivated to pay attention, then something as simple as a bug crawling on the wall can distract me. Who needs the internet for distraction?