Hi Ali, The Atlantic magazine published an article about this same subject in their July/August issue called "Is Google Making us Stupid."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google I went back to look over the article and it doesn't mention Small's book, but does present an interesting and well balanced article. The most interesting part was at the end, where the author, Nicholas Carr talked about how this is not first instance in history where a new form of technology has provoked fears about it's impact on our intellectual abilities as well as our culture. For example, Socrates, bemoaned the act of writing (the new technology of his day) thinking that it would cause people to %u201Ccease to exercise their memory and become forgetful%u201D. Next, Gutenberg's printing press spurred similar fears. According to the article, Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would "lead to intellectual laziness, making men less studious and weakening their minds." In both cases, some fears were warranted and indeed proved prescient, but neither anticipated (or so it seems) the benefits spreading information, spurring fresh ideas, and expanding human knowledge that writing and printing would have on our culture. So, yes, our modern memories fail to have the motivation or capacity for memorizing Ovid, but we also have unprecedented access to information. But is this making us flat (wide) and thin thinkers, rather than deep thinkers? Do our needs change our thinking? Or does our thinking change our needs as a culture? In any case, it's a very interesting topic. That said, I hope some of the UX Bookclubs will now and then choose books that pose larger cultural/philosophical questions like this one. Thanks for bringing it up. Let us know what you think when you've read it. Cheers, Cindy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36180 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
