THE WORLD IS BURNINGGGG!

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.

Oscar Wilde said that. Oscar Wilde is an interesting dead man. His short, witty, to-the-point sayings have experienced an extreme revival with the advent of the internet. He’s quoted often by people who don’t even know who he was, or only know the Wikipedia summary of his life. He’s quoted because he fits into the construct of the internet: the quotes are relatively concise, interesting, and have an element of romantic elegance (“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”) that is easy to relate to. They are not very threatening to the neo-hippie-but-tech-saturated-generation that rules the internet today. They just fit, and they’ve become a staple overnight.

The internet’s ability to do this terrifies some people, notable Nicholas Carr, a self-preservationist Enyclopedia Britannica editor who wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled, “Is Google making us stupid?” In the article, he insinuates that short-span reading, like skimming articles or browsing facebook, is changing the neuroplasticity of the brain.

But I disagree.

Carr himself explains a chunk of my argument:

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).

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

These analogies are fitting for the internet. I do think the internet is changing things. For one, it’s making us way, way smarter. I learned programming only via free online resources. I learned a skill, which I sell as skilled labor professionally. I learned it for free. I sell it for money. Thank you, collective internet contributors. Just as the unforeseen benefits of the printing press outweighed the negatives, the internet will create super intelligent humans. We have essentially built a hive-mind of information.

Everyone agrees the internet is awesome in this sense, but what about the changing neuroplasticity of the brain? As Carr uses mostly anecdotal evidence for this, mostly of his own experiences with reading, I will use anecdotal evidence as well. I read articles online all the time, I program, I facebook. I love short snippets of information. But when Dance with Dragons was released, I spent 2 days devouring 1,040 pages of gritty, descriptive fantasy. I do read less than I did as a kid, mostly because I spend less time reading books I don’t enjoy. This means the quality of my reading has risen. And unlike Carr, I have no “mental fog” when trying to read a long complicated novel. (There are few things in life more complicated than the story lines in Song of Ice and Fire) On top of that, this series is fairly popular, meaning other people have no problem reading thousands of pages as well as posting online on the crazy ASOIAF forums and participating in the huge online community for this book. These are techy people, and they read. A LOT. Since Carr’s article also kind of attacks the younger generation, I’d say look at the readership of Harry Potter. Think about the sheer mass amount of tumblrs dedicated to Harry Potter. These kids (and adults) love short sweet info, but they also love reading Harry Potter, a considerably long series, renowned for it’s depth and quality of writing.

10 years ago you were limited to the information that fit your social class. Now, the limits are removed. But Carr should be worried. His position as an encyclopedia editor is under attack. Now we have hive-mind expertise contributing to Wikipedia for free. Like the scribes that were not needed after the printing press, Carr is no longer needed. I guess it makes sense to write a book about how you lost your job. We all gotta put food on the table.