Internet Makes People Dumb, Methinks Says Nobel Laureate

I talked a while ago about the way the Internet and the search engines, in general, stop the creative thinking in youngsters after reading a Graz University professor's take on the "copy/paste generation". It looks like he isn't the only one concerned with the matter, newly awarded Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, used her acceptance speech to tell the world that our relatively new-found best friend, the Internet, makes us dumb, as Duncan Riley of TechCrunch.com noted.

While a little far-fetched an assumption, it is worthy of further studying. "We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers", she said. Not entirely true, no one forced the use of Internet into our homes, we chose it willingly. Secondly, despite a "firstly" never being mentioned by me, the Internet is only "malevolent" for those who cannot see further than it or are just too comfortably seated in their chairs for the peak beyond the screen and into the library.

Oh, let's not forget that, thirdly, at least for the moment, all the books haven't been digitalized and thus are not accessible via the Internet. Sadly enough for us "paper readers" - and by that I mean printed content, it is soon going to change as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are struggling in their vie for power to do just that - digitize every book.

Back to Doris Lessing, she is after all an old woman who couldn't make it herself to hold the speech and because of that she might be suspected of having old views on the world today. Not entirely so, the Internet does kill off the creative stream of thoughts, but only to those who let that happen of their own free accord. The others should be safe, all you need in order to get past its pull is a little curiosity.