In recent times, critics have questioned the Internet's utility.
The net Luddities range from those who berate it for being an emporium of pornography to those who question the worldwide web's all pervasive influence on modern life. Nicholas Carr is among those who raise significant questions while criticising the Internet. In 2007, in an essay in Atlantic, he asked if Google was making us stupid.
The essay posed a very important question: As we enjoy the Net's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Carr expands his Atlantic argument into a compelling exploration of the Internet's intellectual and cultural consequences in the book.
Strictly speaking, Carr is not a Luddite. A prolific blogger, tech pundit and author, he cites academic research to make anyone pause and ponder about society's full embrace of the Internet as an unadulterated force of progress. "Studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning," Carr writes.
The tech writer believes the Internet's ethic is that of an industrialist's, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimised production and consumption. Sure, Internet users are literate, and highly developed literacy will not disappear. It is possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just like it's possible to think shallowly while reading a book. But that's not the type of thinking Internet technology encourages.
To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to "lose oneself in the pages of a book". Developing that sort of discipline evolved slowly. That evolution is halting and apparently reversing because of the Internet. We are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection, and becoming mindless consumers of data.
But think of Internet products as Wikipedia and its spin-offs such as Gigapedia and Wiktionary. Imperfect as they may be, the knowledge contained within these kinds of sites is something unprecedented in human history. Such powerful online resources arm scientists and the masses alike with the same data, breaking an intellectual Brahminhood of sorts. In fact, many of the studies Carr mentions are also available online.
In a recent The New York Times essay, psychologist Steven Pinker Steven wrote that the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search, and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopaedias. "Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart," Pinter wrote.
Madhusmita Sen is a technology writer in Bengaluru