Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In the July/August issue of the "Atlantic Monthly," Nicholas Carr ponders this question.

I'll admit that the uber-connectedness of the internet has reprogrammed many of my thought patterns and daily routines. (Morning: "Must turn on computer. Must make coffee and check e-mail.") On a larger scale, it has, arguably, redefined what it means to be literate. Though Carr celebrates the convenience of the internet, he laments his own lost ability to "read deeply," sacrificed for the hyper-now-ness and superefficiency of the web.

The whole article is really a coming to terms with these trade-offs. To put it in perspective - or maybe just talk himself through it - Carr informs us that even Socrates himself bemoaned the development of writing. "He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would ... 'cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.'" And "they would be 'filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.'"

Hmm.

I admit, like Carr and Socrates, I am sometimes nostalgic for the past and a little frightened of the future. Sometimes I feel like the media artist Paul Chan who foregoes Internet access in his studio to protect himself from what he calls the "tyranny of connectedness."

Looking into the future, Socrates would have laughed at his worries - maybe even written about them on his blog. In the same way, Carr, myself and other late-comers to the Internet bandwagon will learn to trade our worries for a carefree ride to wherever this magic carpet of technology takes us.

And is it really necessary to make a value judgment? The Internet is here. If that gets to be too much, we can just click on the little red "X" and hide out with a good book for a while.