"Getting Smarter" by Jamais Cascio

Summary: Cascio talks about how technology is not necessarily hurting us, but rather expanding our knowledge. Throughout the years of humanity, technological advances have also advanced humanity, making us have more knowledge and manual labor less important. He talks about how our attention span is clouded and short but its only because we have more things so easily available to us and could have tabs of information open at the same time. He talks about ADD that is given to us by technology, but how certain legal drugs could keep us super focused. He does not think that the web, or even video games, hurts our minds or makes us dumb.

Meaning/reaction: by this article, Cascio means that for the entirety of human existence, we have been expanding our knowledge by being approached with problems that we create solutions for the future. Technology that we create is for always for the use of something, even if that something is not information, but rather for entertainment. Even in that case, he argues that even videogames have great detail in them and relate to things in a bigger picture. In today’s world we have so many things at our fingertips, so much information, people’s opinions from all over the world. He does not think that this technology is making us dumber, although agrees that our attention span is now flawed due to the fact that we don’t just need to have one book in front of us, we could have whatever it is that we want to look up at that particular time. Even for me to read this whole article took a while because it was hard to pay attention, but I don’t think that that makes me stupid, it just makes me uninterested. There are plenty articles on the internet on subjects that I find interesting that I would be able to read straight through without stopping or having to go over a sentence twice. I agree with him, I don’t think our technology makes us more stupid, especially if used the right way. Often times people use technology stupidly, but that doesn’t make us stupid. We have grown and developed as human beings, and will continue to grow and develop as we are faced with new problems that need new solutions. The internet gives us a sort of awareness that we never had before by being able to have insight from all over the world, articles and even games. We should consider the technology that we have an advancement rather than a handicap. It is useful. Anything that I want to know I could just type into google, and with the right source, find my answer. I think that makes me know MORE then the generations before me, not less.

Tie in: This article ties in with Carr’s article because Cascio does agree that technology gives us a sort of “ADD”, and references Carr’s article because of this. He thinks that a lot of people have the same fear as Carr, in the sense that since he is of a generation before the intense use of the internet, it made him think differently or clouded his brain. However, Cascio does not thoroughly agree with Carr’s argument because he thinks on the opposite side, that although it may be affecting attention span somewhat, it is not making us stupid. He argues that the voices on the internet could often be mistaken as “noise”, meaning that peoples logical opinions on things could be mistaken as junk. He argues that this is not junk, and that the extra opinions could actually improve our way of thinking.