Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds For The Better

Technology nowadays always use to have so much information at our fingertips, but is this a good thing? That is what Jamais Cascio’s “Get Smarter” and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” both discuss; they specifically address the effects that new technology, such as the internet, has on the way humans think. The difference is that Carr argues that this new technology is making us stupid while Cascio argues that it is making us smarter. Nicholas Carr’s article discusses the negative effects of the internet and technology like it. It specifically mentions slight changes in the way people do things because of the influence of technology and gives many historical and anecdotal examples. Jamais Cascio’s article is about the advancements of technology and how it is makes people smarter. Cascio talks about Twitter, mental enhancement drugs and AIs, focusing a lot on the benefits of the advancements.

It helps infants make sense of experience. (It organizes the large amount of new information they encounter everyday, so they can learn and remember more new things.)

The uses of technology like computers and cell phones are growing every day with new uses and forms. There are mixed feelings about if technology is making us smarter or stupider thru out day to day life. Nicolas Carr a New York Times writer wrote an article about “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and he tries to show people that computers are making our lives simpler and there for making us as humans stupid. Another writher that goes by the name Greg is a writer for digitaltonto.com, and he found the previous article and wrote “How Computers Change the Way We learn” which is about how all lot of the facts in Carr article could have been read to say anything that the author wanted, so he could make people believe.

Is technology helping or hurting society? Is society smarter or slowly getting dumber as the digital age gets better and stronger? Two authors in the Coyote Reader touch on this subject and argue the different advantages and disadvantages that the digital age has on society. Ultimately, the answer comes down to perception. Technology is not necessarily making society dumber, it is just changing how the brain works.

In this article, Thompson’s uses chess anecdotes to make it easier to understand why technology and our brains work together best. Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen were two New England men who beat the most powerful chess computer. “Why could these relative amateurs beat chess players with far more experience and raw talent? Because Cramton and Stephen were expert at collaborating with computers. They knew when to rely on human smarts and when to rely on the machine’s advice.” (345) This experience shows us that Thompson's thinks that when it comes to technology versus man, you don’t

Humans have been in a race for intellectual superiority against themselves for their entire existence. Whether it was the Cold War or the Space Race, humans have aspired for intellectual superiority. Even after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to lure NAZI scientists to help win the Cold War. However, during the twenty-first century, the best way to become the most intellectual is through the combined use of humans and technology. In the essay “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better”, Clive Thompson says, “At [technology’s] best, today’s digital tools help [humans] see more, retain more, communicate more” (347).

Technology can help us find answers in a matter of a few seconds. In the article is “Why Google Isn’t Making us Stupid … or Smart” Chad Wellmon briefly explains how the internet is not helping us get any smarter or any stupider. We are just not learning anything and we just find results. “Digital technologies, claim the most optimistic among us, will deliver a universal knowledge that will make us smarter and ultimately liberate us” (Wellmon 68). Wellmon is try to explain to us that the Internet will help us in looking up things that we might want to know. We can learn new things just by a quick search. You can look up anything on the internet and you will find answers from all over the world. Therefore, you can learn anything you want about the world. Without Google we probably would have had still been stuck in the stone ages. “Likewise, to suggest that Google is making us stupid is to ignore the historical fact that over time technologies have had an effect on how we think, but in ways that are much more complex and not at all reducible to simple statement like ‘Google is making us stupid’ (Wellmon 69). This quote is telling us how we can learn anything we want thanks to the internet because all we have to do is search something and millions of results will show up at the tip of our fingertips. With this technology we have had made great discoveries around the world. Both the internet and technology is beneficial to every single one of us nowadays because we all use it on a daily basis, either to talk to people or to research for an

I do not remember the last time I picked up a book and started to read. The fact that I do not read and I am on the internet a lot has made me think maybe that is why I do not know certain words or why I do not understand how to write a paper. If we all as teenagers and adults would just read a book I feel we would become more intelligent. I hope that more people will read this article and agree that we all should stop for a minute and think about how we are using the internet and if it is making us smarter or stupid. In the article google said “We are trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale”. Many may not think much about this, but what sticks out to me is artificial intelligence. How is it intelligence if it is not natural but made by human itself? So, if you ask me google is making us stupid and we should all do something about

In his essay, “Mind Over Mass Media”, Harvard professor Steven Pinker discusses concerns about how modern technology might affect brain chemistry and functionality. Pinker points out that these concerns are not new, similar concerns have been raised at various time of technological change over the last century and gives evidence that those concerns have thus far been unfounded. He believes that technology is maintaining and perhaps even aiding our intelligence, rather than harming it. Pinker does a nice job of pointing out factual evidence and responding to potential counter-arguments in his piece, quickly and easily rolling from one point to another, never letting the reader become bored with a topic. He doesn’t bog the information down with

Clive Thompson’s “Smarter Than You Think” reflects upon the idea that technology is her to help us more than we think, rather than the popular belief that technology is ruining the way we think. Thompson believes that the pair between human and technology is making us smarter. Along with that, our minds are slowly adapting to the use of technology, advancing our thinking. Lastly, the relationship between technology and human, has brought humanity closer than ever with the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Clive Thomason believes the stronger the bond between humans and technology, the smarter we can become; I also alongside with Thompson believe this is true, and if so us as humans need to embrace the use of

Lazy or Smarter? The Internet has produced a new style of human intelligence. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with an audience. Also, we can keep up with what’s going on in the world.

Have you ever thought that Google make us dumb? Tomas Chamorro in the article “Is Technology Making Us Stupid (and smarter)?” give us different points of view to explain how technology is helping our society. Technology is necessary in our society, technology has make us smarter and it help us learn.

In “Mind Over Mass Media,” Steven Pinker argues against alarm in relation to new technologies, and especially against their claim that the Internet and electronics are making humanity less intelligent. He argues from many different angles for only two pages, and ends up with a convincing argument. He first cites former instances where worries about new media proved unfounded, such as average intelligence increasing despite the onset of television, and crime declining after video games became popular, even though many argued that they bred violence. He then asserts, by citing a scholarly book on the subject, that mental training—“new media” or otherwise—has little effect on other aspects of the brain. Pinker concludes with saying that not only

Another reason I chose this article is that since technology has become so popular in this world, more people use computers for everyday tasks. Even though this is happening, it does not necessarily mean that it is making us stupid. There

Where would we be without technology? The number of things that we are now capable of doing is infinite because of the technology we have access to. This technology is also changing the way we think, write and concentrate. Cell/ smart phones along with texting and being able to Google practically everything have all played a role in the way we think and do things in today’s society.