The Age of Internet Intelligence

Nicholas Carr’s article “Does the Internet Make You Dumber” presents some troubling ideas, but how thorough is his analysis? The internet comes under fire because of what it is doing to people, but the very premise that an inanimate tool can make us smarter or dumber by itself is a poor point to argue. The way people use a thing determines its worth, so in that way, up to this time, the internet does seem to be responsible for dumbing down people and acts as a replacement for a social life. Carr’s facts cannot be disputed, they are facts, at least as far as study and experiment results can be called facts. At the very least they are compelling. But the potential of the internet is so vast and it is still so young that what we are really facing is a short view of the situation.

Over time, people will better learn to use the internet. Society, education, and the economy require functional members to survive and humans are adept at survival, so will remain functional. Carr mentions that students with the internet performed poorly on a lecture-based test, but maybe that means lecture is going to become an obsolete or less relied-on method of teaching. Multitaskers may not excel at conventional cognitive tests, but these people being tested are still relatively new to the internet as we know it today. Even if they grew up with it, their parents did not and so did not know how to educate their children about it. It is not that the internet is making us dumber or we're wasting time on it, it is that we have yet to get the most out of it.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?." The Wall Street Journal. N.p., 5 June 2010. Web. 30 Aug. 2013. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284981644790098.html>.