Wednesday, September 1, 2010

critical response to article (9/1/2010)



Nicholas Carr poignantly addresses all of the same idiosyncrasies that have plagued my love/hate relationship with this new “plugged in” world. From my perspective, the computer has become this really fancy social networking gadget, but to see someone sitting at a computer or laptop renders him or her unapproachable. The device has encased them in this imaginary, yet socially understood, cocoon of solitude. There is a very sick irony there.

I have been concerned for a while about the consequences of having the answer to any probing query so readily at my fingertips. I’m worried about the biological ramifications of relying on a Google search to remember something that my brain could not. This is why I feel the need to take ginkgo biloba twice a day. The computer has become a crutch for thinking. If a person breaks their leg and they are forced to use a crutch to walk, the unused leg becomes weak. If that person were to continue to use that crutch, the unused leg would eventually atrophy. What if we are atrophying the part of our brain that is responsible for recall with the Internet?

Carr talks about Google’s philosophy. Google wants to make the world’s information “universally accessible and useful” to improve upon our productivity as thinkers. I hear this and I can only think of another analogy. Imagine two lions. One lives a lazy existence in a small habitat at the Toledo Zoo and is spoon-fed a steady diet of raw steak cutlets and the other is a cunning predator that relies on its’ prowess and intellect to survive in the vast Kalahari Desert. Can one argue that the Toledo Zoo lion is being denied his instinctual purpose in this world? Are we denying ourselves a necessary developmental hunt for knowledge if everything is completely distilled and spelled out for us by the Internet?

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