Google=Stoopid?

There is a provocative article in the July/August issue of The Atlantic Magazine by Nicholas Carr called "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" The thesis of the article is that Internet use (and not just Google) rewires the brain and makes people increasingly incapable of following the long, dense, complicated argumentation that a previous technical development, the Printing Press, made accessible to a mass readership.

Myself, I think this is silly. I think indeed we may be increasingly incapable of following long, dense, complicated argumentation, but it's because everything we do is increasingly strapped to the engine of economic gain. At work, we have no time for long, dense, complicated argumentation, and so all that philosophical guff gets set aside. It's bad for our brain to neglect philosophy, though. If anything, Google is our friend, so we can get through our jobs faster, and have more time for long, dense, complicated argumentation. Google is a brain vitamin.

Today, a Google search from Saudi Arabia sent a reader to my Web Site. The Google search was "meaning of sparky to the illuminati". That search just blows my mind. It's true, my dog Sparky is a perfect dog, and that might be of interest to the Illuminati. But still, what does the search mean, exactly?

So, Google doesn't make us stoopid, but stoopid does make us Google.