Overview
Correction: Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was published in the summer of 2008, not the summer of 2009 as this report originally stated.
A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered.
The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues:
“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.” Read more...
About the Survey
The survey results are based on a non-random online sample of 895 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.
This publication is part of a Pew Research Center series that captures people’s expectations for the future of the Internet, in the process presenting a snapshot of current attitudes. Find out more at: http://pewinternet.org/topics/Future-of-the-internet.aspx and http://imaginingtheinternet.org.
