There is no question in my mind that the internet has changed the way that I think.  But is it for better or for worse?

Two interesting perspectives.  

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Illustration by Guy Billout

“Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”  Read the rest….. 

And the rebuttal: 

Response to Nicholas Carr’s ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’

By Trent Batson03/18/09

Criticism of the Web most often questions whether we are becoming more superficial and scattered in our thinking. In the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr published “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google). Like other critics, he sees change as loss and not as gain. But, his own criticism is superficial and misses the humanizing impact of Web 2.0. Read the rest…