The Wired article “Google’s Grand Plan to Make Your Brain Irrelevant” discussed Google’s buying spree. The company is buying up all sorts of start ups and the article claims this is for their mission to “to build an enormous digital brain that operates as much like the human mind as possible”. This “digital brain” will be able to “learn ‘organically’ — that is without human involvement”. Already “for many of us, Google already functions as an important part of what WIRED columnist Clive Thompson has called our outboard brain. The more Google ‘knows,’ the less we have to remember. We just Google it.” This push towards buying smart computer hardware could really impact our lives. As the article puts it “now imagine that same kind of intelligence Google applies to the web set loose on your personal existence, not just online but out in the real world.”
I for one am excited to see where this all leads us. I grew up an avid sci-fi fan and to see a company like Google, a company I have a lot of faith in to follow their motto “don’t be evil”, a company that has shown time and time again that they prefer to take a creative approach to life’s problems, to see them take the lead in bringing us into the future really makes me excited!
The article seems to be under the impression that Google’s upgrades will be used to turn our own minds irrelevant however I truly believe that the upgrades to our technology will actually lead to upgrades to our minds. Google has already made it so that the need to memorize things in no longer necessary. You can just google any fact you wish to know and not suffer for remembering something that was taught to you back in the third grade. In fact rather than trying to teach you facts in third grade the teacher might better use their time teaching their students to learn critical thinking processes. Memorizing does not make someone more intelligent. Plenty of intelligent people exist and haven’t memorized the distance to the sun, how to recite Hamlet’s “Alas poor Yorick” monologue, or even how to spell certain words.
Ex: smart people who can’t spell for shit:
http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/01/24/15-famous-thinkers-who-couldnt-spell/
However, critical thinking processes can make someone more intelligent.
With Google’s upgrades we might expect to see an increase in brain power. What Google is truly making irrelevant is our already outdated method of teaching.