[Web4lib] "Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains"

[Tim Spalding]

Plato said much the same thing about the invention of writing :)

"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they
will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is
written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within
themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered
is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom
that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling
them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to
know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men
filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be
a burden to their fellows."

T

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 9:03 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> And how about this similarly titled article: Will GPS make us dumb?
>
> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5179471
>
> Bernie Sloan
> Sora Associates
>
>
> --- On Wed, 6/18/08, Michael <drweb at san.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Michael <drweb at san.rr.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] "Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains"
>> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
>> Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 6:29 PM
>> Good paper for good discussion, as we are seeing on other
>> library-related
>> lists. I ran across this similar piece on the current
>> infozeitgist from the
>> "Washington Post":
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061202258.html?referrer=emailarticle
>>
>> Brief excerpt:
>> The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?
>>
>> The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere.
>>
>> One recent report, young Americans don't write well.
>>
>> In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and
>> txt msging --
>> seeping into academic writing.
>>
>> But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the
>> impending death of
>> the English sentence.
>>
>> Librarian of Congress James
>> Billington<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/James+Billington?tid=informline>,
>> for one. "I see creeping inarticulateness," he
>> says, and the demise of the
>> basic component of human communication: the sentence.
>> --
>> Michael aka DrWeb
>> drweb2 at gmail.com
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 4:05 PM, B.G. Sloan
>> <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Here's a new article that might be of interest:
>> >
>> > Carr, Nicholas. Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the
>> Internet is doing to
>> > our brains. The Atlantic, 301(6), July/August 2008.
>> > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
>> >
>> > An excerpt:
>> >
>> > "For more than a decade now, I've been
>> spending a lot of time online,
>> > searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the
>> great databases of the
>> > Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a
>> writer. Research that once
>> > required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of
>> libraries can now be done
>> > in minutes...what the Net seems to be doing is
>> chipping away my capacity for
>> > concentration and contemplation...Once I was a scuba
>> diver in the sea of
>> > words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet
>> Ski."
>> >
>> > Bernie Sloan
>> > Sora Associates
>> >
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