I don't need any help towards stupidity! (Blog #5)

Mr. Carr presents a pretty compelling arguement.  Can't say that I agree with him completely but somethings resonate with me that cause me to do a double take in terms of what I was thinking. 

Early on in this article, Mr. Carr makes the comment, "And, what the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation."  I think that the more we sit in front of the computer and allow for it to do all the work we should be doing for ourselves, we set outselves up for growing stupid.  We don't look up information for ourselves.  We don't take the time to read anymore.  We don't take the time to use our own brain to seek and search for the information that we need to allow us to think.  We tap a few keys, snap on the space bar and before you know it what we were thinking it up in front of us with little help from us to look for it.  I don't know about you, but that is not only stupid but borders on laziness on our part.  I am just as guilty in doing this as the next person but I find myself doing this less and less.  I miss digging for information in a textbook or in an encyclopedia.  I am not that far gone to realize that some things are just not going to be found in a book especially when it comes to the technological end of things but all other things can be found with a little time to do it.  Therein lies the problem.  Time.  People want everything yesterday.  Everything has an immediacy to it.  "My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it:  in a swiftly moving stream of particles.  Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words.  Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." (p. 57)  Scott Karp mentions in Mr. Carr's article when referring to his way of reading an actual book, it isn't so much the way he reads that has changed as much as it is the way He THINKS. 

Other people thoughout Mr. Carr's article testify to the fact that they have lost their ability to stay focused while reading.  They find that they don't have the attention span like they used to have. 

In this article, Maryann Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, says:  "We are not only what we read...we are how we read."(p. 58)  One of the more disturbing bits of Mr. Carr's article is how physicians tend to read articles of importance by skimming it to learn what is needed.  I don't know about you, but if I knew that this doctor was planning to do a major surgery on me and he only skimmed the "how-to" of the way it should be done, I would be scared out of my mind!

I think the internet is only causing our brains to become lazy and looking for someone else to do the work for us.  And, quite honestly, that scares me.  I am not the world's smartest particle in Einstein's brain, but I would like to think I am versed enough to know how to find something the good old-fashioned way when the time comes and I needed to.

                                                                                                                       -JT