Nicholas Carr: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Commonwealth Club
In his article in The Atlantic, Mr. Carr writes:
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).Socrates might respond that Google (and the whole Encyclopediast project) has not served to spread knowledge and enlightenement, but merely confirmed people in their ignorance as they continue to be deluded in their belief that they have knowledge rather than opinion. It's all about definitions -- what Socrates (and the Socratics) meant by knowledge is probably different from what Nicholas Carr means. I suspect Carr follows certain moderns in understanding knowledge as justified belief.
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