Get Smarter Summary, Reaction and Tie in w/ Carr

• Get Smarter Summary:

The article “Get Smarter” by Jamais Cascio talks about how intelligence is an adaptation in humans in way similar to how animals that lived in cold environments grew fur and cactuses that grew in dry deserts gained the ability to retain water for long periods of time. He makes allusions to various other sources, events and articles; he references Carr’s “Is Google making us stupid?” article.

• Get Smarter Reaction

I like how Cascio presented evidence to support two different and opposing arguments. It kept his article interesting, though it is obvious he supports the argument that technology is making us smarter. I thought that his statement of how our intelligence is another adaptation to our environment was very true; I got really excited when I read that we were only going to get smarter in the years to come. I don’t believe the internet is dumbing us down anymore than the discovery of fire or the invention of stone tools did. After his discussion of “fluid intelligence” his article becomes very confusing and talks about mind altering pills, genetics experiments and other topics that sounded like they came from the producers of the Matrix films. He has a good argument up till that point though.

• Get Smarter vs. Carr’s “Is Google making us Stupid?”

Carr’s major argument in his article is that the internet provides many distractions and models our thinking process into one which is unable to maintain full focus on given subject much like the mind of a person who has attention deficit disorder. Get Smarter does not necessarily deny this fact but says that this is simply a short term problem because of the limitations of Google and other internet resources like the fact that information is exactly neat and organized. Get Smarter also states that these multiple thoughts may actually improve one’s process of thought and that now it is inevitable so just go with the flow and adjust to it (which according to him is what we humans are excellent at proven by the fact that we’ve survived for this long).