On the lighter side.. Letterpress Print by Joe Newton

"Learning to think in a digital world" by Maryanne Wolf

"Learning to think in a digital world" is an essay written by Maryanne Wolf for the Boston Globe in 2007. This essay is based on her book "Proust & the squid: The story & Science of the reading brain". Her piont of view tries to be rather scientifical than cultural or historical.

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In this article she expresses her grave concern that the development of knowledge in children who are heavy users of the Internet could produce mere "decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes", and cautioned that the web's "immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge."

Click here to read the article.

Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design

Sorry, here's the link again..

http://pentagram.com/en/new/2010/01/five-ways-the-ipad-will-cha-1.php#more

Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design

This link is perhaps tangential to our topic.. nevertheless..

http://pentagram.com/en/new/2010/01/five-ways-the-ipad-will-cha-1.php#more

We have decided to discuss about Google's article, then let's get on.

Hi everyone! I am glad to be the first.

20 years over Internet's invention we can start talking about some changes in our habits and communication, most of them caused by Internet revolution.

At the beginning when everything was so confusing and everyday we used to experiment new things, Internet was thought like the maximum expression of democracy: a virtual place, where everyone would be capable to express what they want. Now it is proven that customers move in same directions as when they choose a newspaper, everything is about ideology, economic situation and politics. So they will choose websites that responds to their own and build opinion.

But in just about 10 years Internet is not anymore what we used to think. Mr. Carr says: ‘Google and the net is changing our way of reading’. But as he says it is not the first time our brain changed. He has given goods examples of how many others objects like typewriter or books had done the same in the past.

I am slightly agree with how Google has changed our brain, this could be an interesting case of study – that I am sure someone has started it. But I am not agree on the sentence that we are loosing concentration or in case we loose it, it would not be Google's fault.

I think readers have become strongly selective on what they read, so if they have a quick view on a book and it is not about their interest they won't read it. What I mean is that the net is offering a huge range of possibilities, tastes, opinions, authors... Everyone can go online and find that book, movie or paint and read it or watch it. And I am sure if you give the right book to the right person he won’t be distracted. And that's what is Google doing nowadays.

Google is not the new demon (this is one thought I had after reading the article), they have done one thing really good: How to organize data in the virtual world and give it in a quick and more accurate way.

Maybe they are not the best Co. in the world, maybe they are not accurated enough, but we don’t have to forgett one thing: Google is a company and what they want like everyone else at the end of the month is money. If they get money throw Google Ads or promotional Ads I think we can not judge them for that.

Is Google making us stupid?