The Internet Does Make People Smarter

               Living in the age of Internet, our generation has more accesses to all kinds of information. With the help of new technology, people are enjoying the great benefit from being connected together and sharing interesting things. In order to keep up with the paces of the development of our society, it’s very important to adapt to the new digital environment and to learn how to utilize the new technology efficiently. 

               For our generation who were born after the emerging of the Internet, cell phones, digital cameras, and social media, it’s not a hard thing to be accustomed to these new technology. However, for the older generation who have grown up from the world of newspaper, black and white TVs, and paper letters, most of them think that the Internet and related new technology make people dumb because there is throwaway culture that too much dumb stuff with low quality on the Internet, and people relay too much on the technology. 

              But, I still believe that the existence and rapid development of the Internet is because it’s reasonable and rational. The Internet gives us chance to reach a great number of resources that let us being literate. At this point, Clay Shirky’s viewpoint in his article “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” reinforce my belief and confidence to the Internet. In his article, Shirky is a Internet advocate who critically think of the positive effects of the Internet. 

               I’m inspired by Shirky’s comparison between the development of print press in 16th century with the current development of the Internet. Many people that are pessimistic to what the Internet has brought to the society actually don’t recognize what’s the new and positive changes. Shirky said that it’s absolute correct that printing press brought choas to European’s religious culture and church’s intellectual life, but what followed is people built “ new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature.” In fact, according to Shirky, “all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.” It’s a reason why the Internet is well exist because the Internet has a increasing effect to our society. We are creating new digital culture that information flow has more freedom to be accessed and shared. 

               The Internet dose make us smarter. A huge network connect billions of people together and also links numerous intellectual resources of people together into a fair platform. Then, people not only have the equal right to benefit from that platform, but also contribute their effort to enrich that form. I agree with Shirky’s “cognitive surplus” opinion. According to Shirky, the “linking together” by the digital media “in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus”, and “our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.” Shirly used a example of Wikipedia to prove that Just the combination of old scientific idea of peer review and the Internet can create the most important English reference work in this world. 

              Now, it makes sense that Wikipedia lets the Internet become a big free bookstore of encyclopedia, and it works for everybody to find and create educational resources on it. So, what do you think you will be after reading several pages of encyclopedia once people just search a unknown word on the Internet? Smarter or dumb?