Is Google making us stupid? Yes and no. It is making us smarter in the sense that the advent of the world wide web has allowed people to connect from Japan to New York and back in a matter of seconds, spawning ideas, discussions, and thoughts that have helped to advance our society in many ways, whether they be obvious or behind the scenes. For better or worse, it is changing the way the human brain processes ideas and information, maybe even at a biological level (4). With all the commotion going on every site (between ads, flashing banners, and bright colors, intending to suck the naieve consumer into believing their product is important and necessary in his life), we have gone from reading and analyzing long texts to losing our attention span because of the need to gather the minimal amount of information on every ad or headline and efficiently decide if its worth our valuable time to read deeper into it. Just as Socrates was worried about the effect of writing in that he thought people would “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful”, its possible that the quick processing and short attention span needed for our current internet era could stunt the development of our reading of things longer than a headline or ad. (6) As Google is getting smarter, one could argue that comparatively we are getting dumber. The possibilities for the advancement of a computer are infinite compared to that of the human mind, which is “just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.” (6) Unfortunately, until we have some more major advances in medical technology, the size and processing speed of the human brain will probably remain relatively the same as we know now. So, like I said, yes, Google is making us stupid, but on the other hand, no, Google is not making us stupid.
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