Imagining the Internet

For the past two days, I’ve had the Geek Quote of the Day on The Great Geek Manual site. Both came from the new Pew Internet and American Life Report called “Imagining the Internet IV.” While I’ve imagined the Internet for Pew three other times, I don’t think that my imaginings have gotten such nice pass-along attention. Thanks, GGM. Also with great geek futurings is Fred Stutzman who will no doubt become quoted as well.

Google allows us to be more creative in approaching problems and more integrative in our thinking. We spend less time trying to recall and more time generating solutions.
– Paul Jones in the “The structure of the Internet” report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Google will make us stupid and intelligent at the same time. In the future, we will live in a transparent 3D mobile media cloud that surrounds us everywhere. In this cloud, we will use intelligent machines, to whom we delegate both simple and complex tasks. Therefore, we will loose the skills we needed in the old days (e.g., reading paper maps while driving a car). But we will gain the skill to make better choices (e.g., knowing to choose the mortgage that is best for you instead of best for the bank). All in all, I think the gains outweigh the losses.
– Paul Jones in the “The structure of the Internet” report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

One correction: The quotes are not in the Structure section of the report but in the Future of Intelligence section also known as “Does Google Make Us Stupid” My claim is that most of us don’t need Google for that ;->