Does Technology Make People Smarter?

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we didn’t constantly develop new technology? Have you also wondered how life would be like without technology in general? The answer is hard. Not only would life be difficult, but it would also mean that humans would not be able evolve. In the 21st century our lives are filled with new gadgets and tools that help use on a daily basis. With technology being at the nexus of our society, debates have risen whether technology is truly beneficial to the human race. Some, such as Nicholas Carr, believe that technology is turning us into simpletons. But what exactly does technology do beside make out lives easier? In “Smarter than you think,” Clive Thompson believes that with technology as our tool we …show more content…

Technology, more specifically the Internet, has an infinite amount of information at a persons’ fingertip. If one was to ask random people on the street if they knew what was the capitol of Uzbekistan or what caused WWI, chances are these random people wouldn’t know. By the way the capitol is Tashkent and WWI started by the assassination of archduke Ferdinand. I knew this because I simply looked it up online. Another way in which the Internet helps people is that the hoi polloi don’t have to invest time and effort in remembering unnecessary information. This is a benefit from utilizing “the perfect recall of silicon memory” (Carr 315). People could just easily “zip over to a search engine” and find the desired piece of information that their is looking for (Thompson 351). In a way humans can make space in their memories for knowledge that is important rather than have a stockpile of junk that can be simply found online. As of result of machines taking mundane jobs then, “we’ll be empowered to dream up” new ways to improve as a species (Kelly 309). On the other hand, having an infinite amount of information at one’s disposal can be dangerous because there is an uncertainty of what the information will be used for. This can be very terrifying to those who already dislike new technology. Nonetheless, those who are unnerved by the amount of information that’s available online should feel more at ease because the amount of useful …show more content…

As a result, new tech makes people feel uncomfortable because they believe that new gadgets negatively change people’s ability to focus and have deep, critical thoughts. How many times have we read an article online and forgot what we had just previously read or just lost interest completely? This is a question the main challenger Nicholas Carr, who advocates that technology it deteriorating our ability to have deep thoughts and connections with our readings (315-6), addresses in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In addition, Carr believes that people are becoming too lazy to read long articles and often prefer a short article (316). As a result, media sources are forced to shorten their columns to satisfy the status quo. In a way our laziness to read critical is causing us to regress, according to Carr. Would Carr prefer there shouldn’t be technology or is that too extreme to think? Regardless, it’s impossible for people to become more primitive once again; there is no where to go but

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