Does Internet Makes Us Stupid?
The influence of Internet on the society “When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. ” This statement, which was made by President Barack Obama, makes us question whether the use of the Internet helps us succeed or makes us stupid and lock ourselves out of the outside world. The Internet bubble increases its volume and density rapidly, because the number of people and hours using the internet increases dramatically every day. Consequently, books and other research resources are becoming increasingly less valuable.
The Internet has become the biggest library. By growing so rapidly, the Internet system not only makes life so much easier, but also may exceed certain ethical and moral limits. I think that it is true that the influence of Internet in some instances is making us less intelligent. In this essay, however, I am going to argue that internet doesn’t make us stupid. In fact, I believe that what we build and use now, is a huge new development for the nation and for us as individuals. First, I want to point out that Internet lets us develop as a nation. Since it improves continuously, we as human beings improve, as well.
As we develop a system which can carry unimaginable amounts of knowledge, we can become smarter by taking advantage of the information. It doesn’t take that much time to find everything anymore. Thus, we can learn much more in a shorter time period, compared to finding something specific in books or articles, for example, which can be very time-consuming. Of course, books are most likely written in a high-level language, which is in many cases not applicable for the Internet and which can make us able to understand and use specific unusual words.
On the other side, however, I think that we want to learn things in an understandable way and to be able to use them quickly, so that we can learn more in the limited time we have. It is true that many people access inappropriate internet information or spend more time playing games instead of relating to “real” people or being outdoors. It is also true that, in some cases, we are getting accustomed to accessing information so easily we don’t appreciate it enough. This consequently, makes us lazy in doing research of our own. Instead, we are often using other people’s information and their opinions.
I think, however, that this doesn’t make the majority of people less intelligent. In fact, it connects minds. For instance, we are doing something completely new, and we don’t want to do it badly or go to a bad place. The Internet allows us to read reviews and recommendations from people with experience. Thus, we are able to be prepared for something and do a better job. It is also often possible to chat 24 hours a day with someone personally from a specific company or even doctors. This results also in huge timesaving and answers our questions easily. This doesn’t make the people more stupid.
To the contrary, it makes them more mature and we develop as human beings. Even people who are actually lazy or not as smart get the chance to improve themselves easily. People who are already very intelligent use the opportunity to go even beyond their abilities. Moreover, as mentioned in the introduction, President Obama also supports that Internet doesn’t make us more stupid, because we are not only relying on it, but thinking with human mind: “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country: you know what, there are some things we do better together. ” Although the Internet was created by decentralized groups of scientists and programmers and hobbyists, government financing supported much of the early research, obviously because it saw many advantages for the nation in it.
In the New York Times article “The Internet? We create that”, the author supports Obama’s statement, by saying that “… life is full of things we do better together. But what the Internet and its descendants teach us is that there are now new models for doing things together, success stories that prove convincingly that you don’t need bureaucracies to facilitate public collaboration, and you don’t need the private sector to innovate. ” Thus, as shown, the Internet is a new way of learning and doing things which helps us to improve as a human beings.
Pointing out things that we do and don’t do together brings me to the next point of Internet as a huge advantage in international communication and developing our understandings. The Internet gives us the ability to communicate with different people around the world and to improve our intellectual diversity. As we learn so much more from other countries and cultures, we get more open-minded and informed. We are getting close as a world community with fast and reliable communication possibilities around the world.
In addition, business uses the internet to cooperate and trade with other companies all around the world and to become international. On one hand, this leads to more and better language skills, and on the other hand, to better understanding and studying of different cultures and economies. Consequently, the world view makes us smarter and makes us seek the best we can achieve. A few decades ago, people were not as informed about other countries and diverse as they are now. Every country can improve itself and take huge advantage of other countries, rather than just studying books and not connecting with real people and countries.
The communication possibilities are more personal and interactive through different chat services and video conferences offered, for instance, by Skype, FaceTime, Whatsapp or Viber. We, who created the internet, did it to become more intelligent. To seek to the best is human nature. How else would everything be so easily and equally available for everyone? From my personal experience I can say that the communication possibilities through the Internet are one of the biggest advantages of the Internet. As an international student in the U. S. I can easily contact my family and friends back in Germany and be up to date. This enables me to study overseas without feeling as far apart and improve myself in all ways in a different culture. It is also worth mentioning that the internet makes it possible and realistic to study in a different language without having major difficulties. Since the internet offers fast access to information in all languages and different translation pages, it is possible to understand everything and make different researches. This fact connects to my last argument: The Internet is the best resource of information.
Besides the facts that the Internet helps us to improve ourselves and connect with other countries easily, we have all resources collected together, which we improve and up-to-date constantly. Besides the point that we save time, it lets us compare lots of information. It is true that Internet has diminished our interest in reading books and going to the library. In the book “The Shallows,” Nicholas Carr mentions that the rise of the Internet might lead to loss of important mental talents because every technology would come with trade-offs.
According to Carr, however, the Internet is actually good for the mind. He applies a comprehensive 2009 review of studies published on the cognitive effects of video games and found that gaming led to significant improvements in performance on various cognitive tasks, from visual perception to sustained attention. Consequently, he claims that different tasks of the Internet could increases the speed of information processing. We don’t need to stick with only a few resources, but can compare everything to get the most correct information, and as a side effect, increase our concentration skills.
For example, when we are looking for a specific historic time period, we can compare resources from writers all over the world and thus, we can compare different views on certain aspects. What if the two books you find in the library have two completely different descriptions of an event? Where else, except on the internet through Google or Yahoo searches, could we find out what’s really true? Besides this, the Internet offers access to the latest research in different fields like technology, science or medicine. Isn’t that what we want and what can make us smarter?
A 2009 study by neuroscientists at the University of California proves that performing Google searches led to increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, at least when compared with reading a “book-like text. ” This certain brain area would, according to the studies, underlie the precise talents, like selective attention and deliberate analysis, which would have vanished in the age of the Internet. Thus, the Internet or specifically “Google, isn’t making us stupid – it’s exercising the very mental muscles that make us smarter. In addition, students are most likely required to use the internet for extensive researches and be in contact from any place through email or blackboard, for example, to share information and learn. All in all, through my demonstrated arguments that internet lets us act as better people in our life, that it connects the world, and that it is the biggest library with all imaginable information, I strongly believe that Internet is making us predominantly cleverer.
It is true that it all depends on an individual person and how he or she is taking advantage of the online world. It also depends what character and habits the person has generally in his or her life, because so does he or she, most likely, get influenced by the internet. In my opinion, however, every person gets advantages of the Internet in their way and learns for his or her life. If, in some way we can say that Internet has a negative effect on the person, we can’t only blame the Internet.
All interrupting technologies and the people attending the online world are seeking to get the attention of people, who are constantly craving to get new information in the best way. Consequently, many opportunities and offers are almost impossible to resist that we are wasting a lot of time in the internet. But we are human beings and we are trying to seek to the best or can you resist everything and just be perfectly mature? ——————————————– [ 1 ]. http://www. nytimes. com/2010/06/06/books/review/Lehrer-t. html? _r=0
