Response to “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” NICHOLAS CARR is trying to show some disadvantages of technology, and especially the Internet. He claims that Internet played with the minds of its users making them more stupid, in the sense that they don’t need that much of effort to get what they need. Actually, I think his article very interesting and contains a lot of amazing facts and information; yet, I want to shed light on some points that he discussed.

Carr accuses the Internet, and due to the fact that it is fast and provide extreme ease of access to information regardless of place and time, of transforming us from intellects who read books and do intense research, to Internet “surfers” who skim through articles and blogs, and fly from one link to another looking for quickness.

The way I see it is that the Internet made us more demanding, but not at all stupid. The Internet increased the tempo of life, which is bad, as it allowed us to better make use of our times and do more in less time. Before Internet, people used to spend days doing one book; meanwhile, they might not read that intensely, but they have way better chance of accessing more information from different sources, looking at the argument and its counter one in the same time, and multitasking. Every book writer has core arguments that the book builds on, along with other stuff to actually make it “a book”; the Internet just taught us how to look to the core directly and ignore the stuff, if we wish.

(In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.”) (Carr)

     The author is making use of the previous to show that technology deprived its users, which is everyone, from the knowledge and left them with unorganized information. I still argue against him that Socrates meant the invention of writing or books. Moreover, I think that the Internet revived that Knowledge seeking in a renovated way.

For example, reading the whole “War and Peace” book provides you with a huge amount of information, but doesn’t necessarily make you knowledgeable; on the other hand consider this scenario: first you skim through a review of the same book on the Internet and read comments of people who read the same review or may be read the whole book and most importantly that you all interested in the same thing. Second, you use a social network website to discuss what you read with your friends and finally may be you blog about that book and receive comments about what you wrote.

Apparently, the second scenario is more of a knowledgeable method of learning and can fall in the category of experiential learning because you are experiencing what you learn and providing it as well. Just like the difference between college education and self-education, as someone might get the same amount of information on his own with no need for school or college education; but schools and colleges would have provided him with the knowledge rather plain information.

Security Vs. Privacy

In Jan. 2008, Michael McConnell, Head of the United States National Intelligence, came up with a proposal to monitor all communications, especially Internet, as a measure of security. In an article published in the New Yorker, Michael discussed his proposal; here is a part of that article:

(In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search. “Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation,” he said. Giorgio warned me, “We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”)

The debate between privacy and security is old, however after the September 11 terrorist attacks it became extremely important to find the place to draw the line between the government desires of knowing everything in order to be able to preserve its security and the personal privacy amount that everyone should enjoy. After the attacks, the United States government realized that it has no more the capacity for such a security slip like the one that resulted in the attacks. Globally, security became the first priority for any government.

Good governments are invading peoples’ privacy to ensure their, the peoples’, own safety, and bad ones are also doing the same to ensure their, the governments’, safety and enjoy a “long stay”. In all cases, the individuals’ privacy is invaded and with the Internet being the primary means of communication the debate became even more serious because it is quite important for someone who spent a lot of his time online sharing his information with his friends, chatting with others, and blogging or using Facebook to have some kind of control over his life.

What is important is to find a solution. Governments will not trade their security for any individuals’ rights whatever pressure practiced on them. So, a solution to such a dilemma should be unique in the sense that it preserves people privacy and in the same time guarantee access to “relative” information to governments. For example, a third party could guarantee safe access to information.

Is Facebook Ever Going To Die

My question is not whether the famous website and social network, Facebook, is going to die someday, but, I am trying to find the whether people are increasingly getting obsessed with Facebook, to such an extent that 48% of 18 to 34 years olds check it right after they wake up, because it really represents a need for them that they can’t live without or it is another technology trend that is living “its time” and eventually going to hand it to another newer, imaginative web application.

BBC Technology News, MySpace announced the loss of millions of users during just few weeks and here is the summary:

“Tech industry analysts comScore say figures show MySpace lost more than 10 million unique users worldwide between January and February.

There were almost 63 million users of MySpace in February 2011, down from more than 73 million.

Year on year the site has lost almost 50 million users, down from close to 110 million in February 2010.

The loss of users comes despite a series of changes to the site to make it more about music.

It was the social network site that helped launch the careers of artists like Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash and Lily Allen.

But so far this year MySpace has already announced plans to cut half its workforce.”

Similar cases happened to websites like Bebo, another social networking site, also encountered great drop in their users throughout the past year. These losses represents great defeat to the technology and trend they invented and came with; in other words, they lost their glow not their content and became no more attractive to Internet users. The ones still outliving such as Facebook and LinkedIn are the ones, which are sustainably providing their users with their interest and not just waiting for users to find their interests. Facebook gives his users new, interesting, thing everyday to increase his growth as a social network.

The moment Facebook will no longer be able to feed his users with that “thing” will be the start of its end because people who are not typical Facebook audience, they don’t use it that much, whom the surge of media interest in the site had led to many registrations by people who were never likely to use it in the long term and that will leave it with only is great fans who already had their accounts as part of their life until another astonishing website comes out with a unique new “thing” and start attracting the audience.

The previous scenario is not the only one. Another scenario suggests that Facebook is not just a fashionable trend that people are following because they want to be up-to-date, instead, it really added new thing to their lives that they will never forget or turn on. It allowed them to actively and easily become attached to their friends and families in a very appealing way that Facebook became tied to their social life; in other words, Facebook became their social life , or lives.

State Of Play

The internet Governance Project, an alliance of academics that puts expertise into practical action in the fields of global governance, Internet policy, and information and communication technology, defines Internet Governance as “a collective action, by governments and/or the private sector operators of the networks connected by the Internet, to establish agreements about the standards, policies, rules, and enforcement and dispute resolution procedures to apply to global internetworking activities” and this Internet Governance has three types of functions; Technical Standardization, Resource Allocation and Assignment, and Policy Formulation and Dispute resolution. The first two are more related to technical issues as to give equal opportunity to everyone and regulate and control the space they have. The third one, which is most important because it is linked to freedom of choice and expression and that discusses the possibility of having governments to control their “own” Internet. For Example, in certain countries, governments may prevent some websites based on common norms or local beliefs. Those policies altered the fact that Internet is a “policy-neutral” channel of communication. These “public” policies starts either as result of increasing use of specific “internet thing” in a specific country or community or because state actors respond to internal and international problems by regulating the channel itself which is the Internet.

In the book “Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World ” argued Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, authors of the book, against the impression lot of internet users have that it provides absolute freedom with no rules to restrict the use of Internet. The book is divided into three main sections; Authors started by discussing the days just before and early days of the Internet where they mentioned the continues and serious efforts of several foundations to protect the Internet of rules in having faith in free communities as what the people needed to unite them and get rid of authoritarian governments. In part two, the authors examines the “strike back” of the governments to purposely counteract the formation of “free community” through number of techniques to restrict Internet content or usage. In the last section, ”Vice, Virtues, the Future”, the authors after presenting some case studies speculated that political differences along with cultural ones may lead us into a technological Cold War”

“To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”

Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”

Julian Assange believed that modern governance is a conspiracy by governors and their benefits against the ideas and interests of the governed. For the sake of sabotaging this conspiracy he launched Wikileaks to no more allow governments to communicate secretly and to diminish the power of authoritarian states. He believes that WikiLeaks will force openness and lead to more progressive forms of government.

What Goldsmith and Wu predicted to happen, did happen but between governments_, repressive in particular, and individuals instead of governments and other governments. From social online communities to tweets to political blogs and finally WikiLeaks; the world of Internet witnessed unprecedented significance and reputation as a tool of political reform, forced one, which helped many people understand their regimes more and more leading to a “revolutionary political awareness”. For the first time, even people in Egypt who have never used internet neither have internet access are aware of Facebook and not only aware they also think of it as their redeemer of corruption and decades of injustice.

Long live blogging

Blogging is a miracle; this I believe. Before blogging ordinary people, by ordinary I mean people not involved in politics or journalism arenas, were only receivers of flow; they watch T.V programs that they like, not choose, listen to news in radio or read newspapers, or share ideas in discussion forums within one’s set of acquaintances. Of course they were always selective receptionists, but they have never really been part of the process. Blogging made it possible for any one to contribute to information circulation and have one’s own broadcast station where they write about what they like or what reflects their identity and others have the opportunity to “comment” which is also an aspect of involvement, to end up having a collaborative, interactive and effective platform which are blogs. I’m not willing to discuss why people blog, instead I like to mention some advantages blogs offer.

Multiple truths, for every happening there are millions of stories and that is precisely what bloggers do; they write about the same event with different views based on their identity -not questioning their honesty- and in the end it is left for the others to choose what to read and what face of the truth to believe and still be able to comment and leave their impressions for the host, author, and also other guests.

Different perspectives, blogs do not believe in any kind of geographical or cultural borders since it is an application of the Internet who does neither. You may be blogging about Japan recent earthquake and you are Egyptian and an American or even Japanese read your post.

Encourage people to respond, since it is an interactive application, it depends basically on other people responding to the authors’ posts and leaving their opinions and judgments. And what encourage people to respond even more is knowing that there is someone on the other end of the line to hear them and that there opinions won’t be discarded or ignored as no one will read a blog if they don’t want to.

New ideas, lots of posts are based on other people’s views and/or articles like the one in hand which I a got lots of it’s points from an article titled “Why Blogging Matters More Than Ever” and from time to time you encounters fresh astonishing ideas which you could have never seen through normal media.

Honesty is what matters, a particular T.V news channel could be very popular with high view rates not because of their honesty, on the other hand, honesty is the only path to success for any blog. A blogger needs to be honest to build good reputation and have others trust his/her posts and hence have the desire to share.

One last thing I like to mention is that your blog your own channel through which you communicate with the world which fades everything other than what you think and publish with no weight for any other thing including how you look or what you believe or do. It is also a way of getting something of your chest and involving others in what you could have never told them in personal.

Internet Communities: Creating more identities or losing your only

Identity is the distinguishing print of mankind; it is a set of givens and choices that uniquely describe a person; it is how others see you and the only voice for you on earth and without divergent identities, man would have no differentiating factors except for the way they look. Everything that you do, every incident that you encounters, and every belief you hold and action you do adds up to your identity.

In real life, people usually have one identity that other people know and familiarize with through time, and it is difficult for someone to claim more than one identity, normally, within one societal circle. In order to have multi-identities, one has to be involved in more than one society such as school, work, family, etc.

Internet communities are virtual communities where you need nothing except internet access to take part in and create a virtual persona or more than one and start communicating with others “virtually”; of course it incorporates true communication and some kind of true feelings and interests sharing; but at the same time it is no more guaranteed that communication is between two real persons or what people share about themselves is true.

These communities allowed users to have more than one identity, either in different Internet communities or even within the same community. Finding people who share the same interests and beliefs became much easier as it is the main function of computers to index and search, which made any person able to have big network of online friends and consequently what is known as “Online Life”

Back to “Offline Life” people started to like their online one more as it involves much less or no confrontation with realities, hard decisions to make or boring life to practice. That led them to spend more time on their online life building their identities and communicating with their “online friends”.

Currently, online communities have been present for almost 20 years which is not a big deal, and people are somehow maintaining good balance between their online and offline lives, but with these “disadvantages” of real life, loss of balance is expected in the near future which means people gradually lose their real identity to their virtual ones. Occurrences such as the virtual death of a leukemia patient, which turns to be a virtually made person discussed by John W. Jordan in his article “A VIRTUAL DEATH AND A REAL DILEMMA: Identity, Trust, and Community in Cyberspace” are indications for such an upcoming phenomenon.

Mind Vs. Machine

While I was reading Brian Christian’s “Mind Vs. Machine” my intentions were focused on building a defensive post to show that human being is not threatened by those AI things; giving it a deeper thought I discovered how naïve my argument would look like if I considered the dispute of who is more intelligent, me and you or the machines like the one I am using to type, and ignored what David Levy’s speech, winner of the Loebner Prize 2009, emphasized the importance of AI to better life. It’s human who invented AI and developing computer programs to make use of.

What does it mean to be intelligent? Biological viruses could be considered extremely intelligent because they have the ability to destroy and defeat humans, animals, and any living creatures. They are also intelligent in the sense that they modify their nature to resist any trials of conquering or getting rid of them. On the other hand, computers need human to help them get rid of “computer” viruses which also human invent it. So, again we found that it all roots back to human who is the main player in this game. It is also reproducing in order to prevail a kind of intelligence that robots have no chance of acquiring, at least in the near future. It is important to have real intelligence in order to think of conquering the others that, in the robots eyes, are humans which requires the ability to take side and work on their own to be ahead of us, not just some genius programming robots to beat humans. American Scientists couldn’t finish their atomic bomb first if they had German scientists working in the same lab; in order to take the lead you have to work on your own and work fast and robots till now totally lack this advantage as they are products of human’s mind.

Emotion is also kind of intelligence; a robot’s mood would be the same if it lost a leg in an accident whereas it would greatly affect a man’s life. Also robots have no sense of others which is essential to be form groups. As Rousseau argues that man had no mention in history until he started to socialize with what at that time he realized are identical and that was the start of human history. Robots can not feel the power of homogeneous ties and thus are not able to compete.

Another important characterization of mankind is the value of humanity. Being human does not entail only mind or emotions, but in fact it is a collection of various characteristics that makes every human unique and different from any other. In the Article “Evolution and Future Of Artificial Intelligence – AI vs. Human” the author, Ashish Mohta, points out the distinction; “Any Intelligence should have some sort of common sense. A common sense knowledge base has to be built up. We humans don’t think sometimes and still do it on the other hand computers calculate things even if they have to lift a pen we just do it without thinking too much about it.” Common sense and the idea of doing mistakes and many others may be not advantageous features in the sense of efficiency but they are what make humans unique and creates joy in our lives.

Finally, most essentially is that AI is the future that we should be looking towards. AI topic needs full attention and facilitation that it would help us in every means of life; not only making our life easier but also achieving lots breakthroughs in arenas like medicine, astronomy, and geology. Tiny, Nano, robots can be send to places where it is impossible for human to survive such as underground to collect data and even do tasks. Human beings have all the future in their head, they just need to check it out.