Can the Internet Benefit the Human Mind?

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Final Paper The internet is becoming an extremely important tool for nearly everybody. It is the most recent and progressive media surely to be the “medium” of the future. Yet the debate persists that the internet may or may not benefit the human mind. The web/internet makes the human mind collectively more intelligent. For instance, if a person searches for a topic online, the answer would be immediately available rather than going to the library to find several books and periodicals for information. While a person searches through the internet for data, this research process helps develop areas of the human brain not normally used. The argument that the internet could lead to the stupidity of the next generation, which it provides all information at the stroke of a keyboard is an unfounded one. As a matter of fact, it has been proven in the past where every time a new invention is created, the fear that the invention will have a negative effect on the generation it is impacting is common. Although some of the negative effects are founded, the positive astoundingly outweighs the negative. This dates back to the Greeks when Socrates pessimistically denounced writing saying that it would wipe out the Greek practice of dialectic. “For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories, but, trusting in external, foreign marks, those who learn to use it; they will not bring things to remembrance from within themselves.” Plato quotes him. Socrates’ prime concern was that people would write everything down instead of trying to remember them and he was right. Although it is true that most people do not utilize more of their brains nowadays, the upside is tha... ... middle of paper ... ... me to the web; my phone, laptop and iPad and I spend about sixty percent of the time on a social media network or watching a show on Netflix and forty percent of my time reading newspapers and looking for articles and materials for homework or research and I also look up some educational items. Now I wouldn’t say I’m a bright cookie but I feel as though I learn from most of the materials I am exposed to via the web. Clay Shirky points out that “increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible. Just as Socrates had a problem with writing and just as reading silently was an issue for the Holy Church, when people take to an invention and it becomes a part of life, there will always be others who disagree and denounce it.

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