Would you be lost without your PC?
Published: 20 Sep 2005 17:20 BST
verbal or critical thinking skills, according to several professors tracking intelligence. No one knows exactly why the average mean is trending up, but researchers suspect any number of things, including nutrition, experience with test-taking, and cultural attitudes.
On an individual level, however, it's much easier for people reliant on their computers to feel dumber when they're not online. Without a Google window open for quick answers, someone might be stumped in conversation, and that phenomenon may rise with the invention of IP-connected gadgetry like human-computer interactive eyeglasses.
Someone with a GPS system in their car, for example, could rely on its directions to get to a friend's house repeatedly, without ever having to develop a theory for how to get there. Without it, he or she might be lost.
"Some people think [intelligence is] a single thing and it's the same forever and ever. And of course, it's not. Intelligence changes with time and place," said Robert Sternberg, dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University and a professor of psychology.
The good news is that the increasing popularity of blogs and wikis shows people are talking, arguing and forcing one another to think.
"People are not just idly sitting in front of the TV screen, but through some of these new technologies, [they] are asking questions of the world at large, and having the world respond and change because of the question," Zittrain said.
In fact, until computers can think for us, or thread ideas together, we will still need to rely on our own brains to do the work. The Internet may be vast, but it can't do the critical thinking for us.
"The Internet is information-rich, but it is flat," said John Davidson, a partner at venture capital firm Mohr Davidow who has specialised in investments in artificial intelligence. "The notion of technology taking over the world is false. It may be frustrating when the power goes out, but there are not going to be smart computers taking it over; it might [be] dumb computers. The ubiquity of stupid computers might be more dangerous.
"We are a century away from computers doing brain surgery."
Jeff Hawkins, the cofounder of Palm Computing, is working on that problem. He has started a new company called Numenta in an effort to...
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