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

[B.G. Sloan]

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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