Week 3 - Artificial Intelligence through google?

“Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” (Carr, citing Page, in Is Google Making Us Stupid?) No, no, no...yes, the idea of having all of that information so readily accessible it intriguing, but there is no way that humans can make all of that information meaningful. And if it is not meaningful, what good is all of the information? I won't even classify it as "knowledge", because it has not been processed. Maybe I am missing the whole point, but I don't see how anything like that would make us "better off".

What I am more concerned about, and the article didn't really focus on this, but what is all of this time spent online and texting doing to our ability to communicate? And again, by communicate, I am inplying meaningful communication. Sure, you can say that we are communicating more and better than ever before....you have news? Send a mass email out to all of your email address book? What could be better than that? Your friend's dog dies? Shoot her a quick text, that way you don't have to bother her (or you) with a phone call. Surely our communication has improved! But like all of the time spent online is reshaping our neural circuitry, all of our time spent communicating in such a trivial, superficial manner is surely reshaping our ability to be able to engage in meaningful conversation and really communicate with one another. I can't remember where I read this, but some article I read recently talked about how the first few minutes of most mobile calls are spent discussing where each party is located. The article pointed out, why?? and who cares?? Since when has a person's present location become a hot topic of discussion? We are communicating too much, just for the sake of communicating, but it is not meaningful.