"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

The thing I thought about most after reading "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was the idea of how the medium through which you choose to communicate ultimately effects how and what you communicate. The anecdote about Nietzsche and his typewriter is a perfect example... and how funny that he, like so many people today, bought and started using the typewriter because of its convenience, only to have it take over his writing so noticeably that even his friends could tell.

It makes me wonder if there will ever be anything better, no matter how "advanced" we become, than a pencil and paper. The fact that it takes a long time to write anything of length, that you have time to consider your words carefully, to think through your message long and hard as you write it out... this, I think, is as fundamental to the process of writing as anything else. It IS writing.

So, maybe we should thank Google... not for its search engine superpowers or lightning fast web results, but simply for existing as the polar opposite to the considered, written word.

Now, we know. Google isn't making us stupid, it's offering a window into a virtual world where true writing disappears. It's pushing us -- in a way -- back the way we came.