The HAL Scenario

The HAL Scenario:
My Mind is Going
Mary Hamilton

There is one central theme that runs though Nicholas Carr's article: although the Internet has its contributions, it is taking over the way we live. More specifically, the Internet is hampering our cognitive abilities. Whereas we used to be able to flesh out our thoughts on paper and read longer, more complex works, now we zip from one interesting tidbit to another.

This is not the only time a new process has been heralded as diminishing and demeaning. Carr gives several examples--Socrates lamenting the arrival of writing (p6 & 7), and Squarciafico predicting intellectual laziness due to the Gutenberg press (p7). This fear of negative change is not confined to the invention of writing or the Internet search. I can think of many cultural examples about the fear of technology in the 20th century. Recently I saw the 1964 movie Failsafe. When a circuit malfunctions during a military bombing exercise, planes are given the 'Destroy Moscow' signal. Despite all attempts to bring them back, Moscow and New York City are destroyed in a mushroom cloud. The characters in the movie repeatedly lament that machines have taken over our lives, and that we have lost the human element.

Another cultural example of fear of machines is Isaac Asimov's I, Robot book series. Science has advanced so much that humans can create robots that look and function almost exactly like humans. But advanced robots are baned on Earth because people are afraid of being enslaved by their technological superiority. And finally, there is Fritz Lang's 1928 movie Metropolis where an underclass exists solely to tend to the monstrous machines that run the city.

Nicholas Carr is right to worry about intellectual shallowness and also right to point out the benefits of Internet searching, such as the speed and availability of information. He points out how change can be positive as well as negative in his example of Friedrich Nietzsche buying a typewriter. Nietzsche continued to write even though his style changed (p3). We should be aware of Carr's concerns and attempt to use the Internet to increase our intellectual depth, not decrease it. If we can do that, then we won't have the HAL scenario Carr is so haunted by (p7). "My mind is going, Dave. Dave, I can feel it. Stop, Dave."