Reading on the web is almost certainly affecting the way we process information, but it’s not making us stupid. Instead, it’s changing the way we’re smart. Rather than storehouses of in-depth information, the web is turning our brains into indexes. These days, it’s not what you know — it’s what you know you can access, and cross reference.
Unlike Kevin Drum, I think Suderman is on to something here. Star Trek:TNG paints a pretty poignant picture here, where the crew of the Enterprise has ready access to a super-advanced computer with near-omniscient levels of information on any subject, and is capable of near-rational analysis in its ability to answer hypothetical questions. Simply put, the Enterprise crew depends on the Enterprise computer to have all the information, they simply pluck what they want from it when the time is right. The only member of the Enterprise crew that has any major body of knowledge is Data, but he basically just memorizes everything he sees.
However, the crew of the Enterprise still reads books for leisure (on devices akin to the Kindle), and they do take in the occasional non-fiction work during their reading. But in their day-to-day activities, they rely on The Computer for the facts, and they simply have been taught how to accurately ask the computer questions that allow them to access the correct facts.
Is this so different from Google and/or Wikipedia? Knowing the right search string enables the user to access specific and helpful information at incredibly fast rates. And it's not like the Enterprise crew are a bunch of morons. They know a ton of stuff! Just, they don't learn it all from books.
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