Were Books Keeping Us Stupid?
By way of Tim O’Reilly, I came across some interesting articles:
This one, by Nicholas Carr, asks, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
And a response by John Battelle:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/004494.php
I think this is pretty clearly a cultural conflict between written culture and internet culture. It should not surprise us that this would happen - a similar thing happened in Plato’s time, as part of the transition from a pre-literate culture based on oral traditions to a literate culture - this was addressed by Eric Havelock and Marshall McLuhan.
The pre-literate and literate worlds had different ways of seeing the world. For example, the standard of proof changed. The Greek poets, as well as pre-Socratic philosophers, would simply make grand claims about the world, and if questioned about them would appeal to an insight or inspiration (possibly the direct intervention of the gods). For Plato and later philosophers, however, claims must be backed up by arguments, and arguments are checked against the standards of good reasoning. This (amongst many other cultural changes) marks a great shift in the nature of knowledge and reasoning, driven primarily by technology.
This sort of thing is anticipated by “technological determinism”, the theory that technology drives major changes in society. I don’t have any good suggestions for papers specifically on that subject, but Richard Volkman has written about technological determinism in his paper on technological hubris - abstract: Playing God: Technological Hubris in Literature and Philosophy
I, for one, welcome our new ways of thinking.
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