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At 4,220 words, he proves Google isn't making his writing more terse or staccato. And, with 22 links scattered throughout, are we expected to make it all the way through in one go without being distracted? I'm tired of articles like this one. It's nothing more than people used to an old medium bemoaning the new one. To his credit, Mr. Carr draws the apt comparison with Plato: In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates 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, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Obviously, the development of writing changed the world (I contend for the better, but that may be debateable). The crux of the article is that people will rely on the internet (Google) for information, instead of knowing it. I propose this scenario as a counter-example (originally from somewhere else, but I can't remember the source): Suppose you have two people, Alice and Bob. Alice is your typical human being, and knows quite a bit about a range of topics. Bob has some kind of dementia that keeps him from being able to remember things, so he jots everything down in a notebook. If you ask him something, he'll consult his notebook. He has an equivalent amount of information as Alice. Who is smarter? |