A recent study by the U.S. showed up to 75% of respondents believe that the expert Internet will help people become smarter in 10 years.
Most survey participants agreed that the Internet will help improve the ability of humans to read and write by 2020. “Every four to experts, there are three recipients of regular Internet use will help increase intellectual and cognitive capacity,” said Janna Anderson, director of Imagining the Internet Center said.
However, still 21% of experts attending a poll of the Pew Internet & American Life have thought the opposite. According to them, the Internet will have the opposite effect and even lower IQ in those who use it too much. “There are still many critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia or other online tools to our life,” Ms Anderson said.
The survey was conducted to collect opinions via the Web of the scientific community, business leaders, consultants, writers, programmers and professionals some users were randomly selected. The authors had the idea of a poll conducted after an interesting article published in Atlantic Monthly magazine in May 8 / 2008′s technology expert Nicholas Carr under the title: “Google is making us stupid go? “.
In the article, Carr said that use and rely too much on long-Web will gradually make the user lose the ability to concentrate and think deeply. Until this moment, when participating in polls, Carr still retain their own opinions. “What the networks have done is to move intelligence into thinking that our intellectual-profit, food available. The cost for having too many pieces of information in the hands of petty easily as you will lose to the deep thinking. ”
However, Craig Newmark, founder of Craiglist page says that “people are using Google as a powerful assistant for their memory.” For instance, “you romantic feeling about something and really need to have information and evidence for the feeling behind it. At the moment, the name Google will come up in your head.”
According to the Pew poll, 42% of experts believe anonymous online activities will be limited significantly by 2020, due to the tightening of security mechanisms and identification system. Although another 55% still believe that “anonymous surfing” will still be relatively easy in the past 10 years.