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

[Chris Bourg]

I'll concede that it may be a bit more difficult to carve out 
contemplative time and space now; but I don't think it is a practice 
that has ever come easily or naturally.
Humans have always had to seek ways to escape the pressures and 
distractions of everyday life in order to find time to concentrate 
deeply.  That is why practices like meditation have been around for 
thousands of years.  Blaming google or the internet for our present 
difficulty just strikes me as a cheap and lazy argument.
As a colleague of mine says:
"The desire to find some cause for "stupidity" is probably as old as 
humanity.  If we search hard enough, we will probably find some cave 
pictographs with the approximate meaning of "Fire make people stupid!" 
lamenting the horrible habit of people to stare, transfixed, into the 
flames.  Doubtless, before there was fire, people spent their time in 
the more useful pursuit of chewing wood and bone into marginally useful 
items."

Enjoying the conversation,
Chris

Elizabeth Winter wrote:
> Chris, I think you're onto something with the idea of balance.  
>
> Carrie's recommendation of David Levy follows the same lines.  Levy argues that our challenge is balancing two different types of thinking: ratio (from Latin, the idea of ‘searching, researching, abstracting, refining and concluding’) with intellectus (from Latin, the idea of ‘thinking, reflection, assimilation, contemplation’).”
>
> If we agree it's a good thing to have the ability to concentrate and contemplate, then maybe it's just that today we have to be more intentional about cultivating this sort of thinking.
>
> On a related note: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_eccentric_reads_entire_book
>
>   

-- 
Chris Bourg
Head, Information Center
Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources
http://infocenter.stanford.edu