While reading Wired Magzine, I came across this interview with Nicholas Carr who answered questions related to the future of computing. This article really struck a chord with me because of the following quote:
Q&A: Author Nicholas Carr on the Terrifying Future of Computing The scariest thing about Stanley Kubrick’s vision wasn’t that computers started to act like people but that people had started to act like computers. We’re beginning to process information as if we’re nodes; it’s all about the speed of locating and reading data. We’re transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us.
With the inclusion of myself, I’ve already noticed people beginning to think, act, and live as if they are a computer. For instance, if I ask someone a question, they don’t bother to think of the answer on there own, they Google It. Gee, just think how it would be if you were able to hook up a device to your brain that allowed you to browse through the net in real-time and allowed you to come up with answers to perplexing questions that you no longer needed to actually store in the brain. Why bother remember or learning anything when it’s all archived in the cloud, that can be accessed within seconds?
Do you look at the prospect of being nothing more than a node exciting?
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
That is an awesome quote. I absolutely loved Stanley Kubrick’s films, especially 2001.
Matter of fact, I might watch that again tonight thanks to you.
I’m not sure if I have ever seen any of his films. Mind sharing a few of his movie titles with me so I can check them out?
OK, some of the ones I own and recommend:
2001: A Space Odyssey – Awesome film. Too hard to describe, so just watch. It’s ‘deep’ and requires a lot of thinking between the lines to interpret what Kubrick is trying to show.
A Clockwork Orange – Pretty wacky film that deals with psychology.
Eyes Wide Shut – A film that looks at secret societies. It would be better if it didn’t have Tom Cruise in it… but this was before he became a Scientology wacko.
He also did The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. Both are pretty good.
Sounds like the intro to Terminator 4 haha, very cool quote though which almost makes too much sense. Freaky!
@Brad I know. It shouldn’t make sense. This quote should sound like it would only happen in a movie but in reality, this stuff is really going on.
I don’t know why but that made me think of an article I was reading about the different ways people learn and how teachers need to rethink their teaching process.
People just learn what they need,when they need and then forget it b/c they know they can find the information just as easy on the internet or a different source.
@Sierra I believe that is exactly what is happening. People are only storing the information they need, in which to get by on day to day activities. If they need to know anything more, it’s first stop Google.
@Mike Heh. According to Akismet, you are a spamming drone.
Anyways, if you took away the internet, or all search engines entirely, how dumb would our society be?
Sorry Jeffro, please delete the previous comment. For some reason editing failed.
We’ve become an increasinly lazy society with the advent of writing, and more recently the information age.
Arguably, previously people had to memorize things more, since they had no paper (or computers) to do it for them. Although at the same time they had less things to memorize since society was somehow less complex.
Remember, up until the industrial revolution 80% or so off the world’s population lived off the farm environment. Education and writing was not as necessary and in many cases knowledge was passed on through word of mouth.
The printing press, and previously papyrus had a massive impact on society as we know it.
So while life became more complex for us contemporary folks, we now have more methods to aid us in memorizing than we did previously.
But one day we’ll be hooked straight to Google through our brains, with full access to the world’s information.
Will this happen? I hope not, although we are shaping to become more ‘drone’ like. It’s sad to see images of Chinese workers in the production line that are there all day, like machines.
On a last note, this reminds me of the Matrix. Where machines will one day control the planet. It’s really not that far fetched when you think about it…