Getting Smarter, Summary & Reaction

The article “Getting Smarter” began as an interesting and thorough rebuttal to some ideas posed by Carr and those of his school of thought. He talks at great lengths how human’s brains changed when intelligence and speech were invented. He then discusses how our brains are changing now just as they were before, only this time it is to cope with a plethora of data available to us whenever we go online. After his initial well-reasoned presentation, he moves into the realm of science fiction what ifs, creating a futuristic world inhabited by chemically doped societies with differently functioning brains, which may or may not be waging war against an army of super-intelligent robots.

I like and agree with the beginning of Cascio’s article, that humans are not being dumbed down; rather, they are in the middle of a shift in the functionality of thought. His explanations of early humans learning how to speak and think critically are perfect examples of the human brain’s ability, when faced with a challenge or something technology, to change in a way beneficial to humans as a species. The same changes we are faced with now presumably parallel the changes in thought for humans at the dawn of the stone or bronze ages. These changes are nothing to be feared or avoided; they should be welcomed and embraced; we should grab hold of them like the back of a galloping horse, bound for lands as of yet undiscovered but with promise and ability to better the lives of the entire human species. Perhaps these feelings of enthusiastic anticipation stem from my generation’s growing up in a world of technology—we do not remember the old ways of doing things because we were not around, we only know the new ways, and therefore have no problem moving on to the bigger and better thought processes of tomorrow. The second half of Cascio’s article is useless speculation and fantasizing though; things get a little carried away after he suggests that future societies will begin worshipping different drugs as icons of their brain power, and he builds a science fiction world of rival societies and possibly-evil AI computers. For someone in the mood to read a silly science fiction piece, the second half of this article could suffice; nevertheless, the first half is gold when battling Carr’s assertion that Google and technology are making us stupid.

Carr suggests that tools such as Google and the like are causing a type of ADD, an inability to focus on long articles, and a constant need for stimulus for the brain. Cascio calls this “an induced form of ADD—a ‘continuous partial attention-deficit disorder,’” and while I may laugh at this assertion, some people, notably those of earlier generations, cringe at the idea of changing thought processes. I have been born and raised in a world of technology, so I do not notice any big shift in the way I think and act today. My mind is innately capable of operating in a state of “induced ADD” because I have always been functioning in this sort of state, and therefore do not experience the negative side effects such as inability to concentrate on long articles or be absorbed by a great book. Carr and people of the older generations are not built this way, and can see the shift in their thought processes in an entirely negative light. The situation is similar to children trying to explain to their Great Uncle Randy that having a black passenger riding with him on a bus is not all that bad. The ability to think in a way that encompasses technology is the future for humans, and whether individuals feel it will be good for them in the end or not, Cascio reminds us that “there’s no going back,” and Uncle Randy can either bite his tongue, or get off the bus.