google makes us dumb

Smart people lack focus?

I don't seem to suffer this problem. I can suspect that doing things like playing complex computer games (CIV?) which can require longer periods of attention and focus have helped. And of course, my tendencies to write these ridiculously long blogs from time to time. Maybe this is a specific flaw of certain personal traits, where people with more than natural focus can use the powers of the internet and hyperlinks galore to absorb new information both at a skim and in depth pace.

The paragraph on Nietzsche has some instructive quality to as well. I've virtually always composed my thoughts where they flow most easily: on a computer. My handwriting was inherited from a doctor, therefore, it is best avoided. If I hadn't written some jotted notes myself from papers I dig up from ages ago, I'm not sure I'd know what I was talking about. And the shorthanded way I go about documenting everything now seems destined to confuse anyone who dares take interest in my various research paths. So the idea that the ease with which I compose online or through a word processor also feeds the idea that my style has been forced into some unique page of the written word (or typed as it were).

As for clocks, I am still trying to live in a world without them. If I become sufficiently important, I probably won't use them, but where others still determine some of my comings and goings, things must proceed on a measured timescale. I like my days off, but when it is pointed out the hours spent on some task there is a sense of frustration at the need for documented time.

The story of Taylor is a mixed bag as a result. I enjoy processing efficient functions at places of work. Or in the activities I take part in, there's a natural process that my minds seeks out of a more chaotic environment. It wants to find ways to do something quicker, easier, or with less effort, even to the point of finding long term ways to cut down on the amounts of work inputs needed. But at the same time, I reject the necessity of these imposed time orders. The de-humanization I noticed in frequent office jobs for example where processes were so lacking in actual human capital is a direct result of Taylor's work. Specification of tasks makes people naturally efficient, but it also makes them essentially just cogs in the machine. There's no room for style, or even for a person to seek out individual improvements to their tasks through experimentation. It becomes routine, boring, and stifling to any natural evolution of order. In fact, I might argue that the routine means of breaking down functions becomes an evolutionary dead end where creativity stops. Human creativity is a natural function and hallmark of a chaotic environment. Stifling the chaotic by stamping any possibility of diversion or improvement out becomes a serious waste of potential. The availability of the internet through google et al allows people like me to seek out those chaotic problems more easily and divest our energy into proposing or echoing our solutions. But it also spreads a sense of universality to these ruminations by providing immediate access to the thoughts of hundreds of previous generations. I'm not sure yet if this sense of routine is a portion of my problems with thought, or if the potential for creativity from the relative wild west nature of the Net allows ever expanding room for human capital to grow in new and unexpected ways. But lately I am less than optimistic.

The example of google's work on AI for example doesn't really impress upon me a necessity of uniqueness or intellectual diversity, but rather a continuing movement toward sameness and boredom. If everyone has access to all the information of a computer search, wouldn't they start thinking in virtually the same ways? How fun would that world be to live in? It's far more diverting to try to use the force of reason or data to compel during arguments or disagreements. If people have access to more and more information, then what's the point? There's a potential here for expanding creativity as the human mind through AI could conceivably process massive amounts of data and more easily conform to something like rational behavior. Which doesn't necessarily mean uniformity, but at least removes a good deal of random unethical behavior that continues to pose problems. Just as writing became a substitute for memory (Diamond's book explored the encyclopedic knowledge of native flora or fauna by primitive societies without writing), I would worry that AI would become a substitute for thought. In which case, google makes us dumber.