Is The iPhone Making Us Stupid?

That's one of the topics Walter Mossberg gestured at this afternoon in a talk on "the Future of the Internet and Rise of the Cell Phone," in which he declared that the PC has peaked, and that the future of the internet belongs to pocket computers like the iPhone. The future of the internet, and the future of us: "The internet is a grid," he remarked, "and we're all going to be living on it, and carrying it in our pocket all day long." Mossberg delivered this assessment with a strong note of techno-pessimism woven in: A lot of his talk had to do with the issues constant connectivity raises for deep knowledge ("people hate iPhone users," he remarked, "because you can never have an argument about facts without them whipping out the phone and looking up the answer" - a description that I'm afraid I resemble, even though I have a Blackberry and not an iPhone) and deep reflection (in the future, Mossberg noted, we may never be free of "that subtle feeling that maybe you need to check Slate, or Facebook"), and he echoed some of the points that Nicholas Carr makes in his Atlantic essay on how the internet may be changing the way we think, and not necessarily for the better.

Tellingly, nearly all the questions that followed had to do with how the attendees could get their internet service to work more cheaply and smoothly - especially in Aspen.

Comments

"The internet is a grid," he remarked, "and we're all going to be living on it, and carrying it in our pocket all day long."

Can I use my new iPhone to shoot myself in the head?

Posted by JB | July 1, 2008 4:28 PM

Dude, you've posted, like, five times as much today as you have any other day in months. Either high altitudes agree with you or you're really starved for material back in D.C. Or, you know, your book finally came out.

Posted by Noah Millman | July 1, 2008 4:37 PM

Mossberg may forget that people used to hate cellphone users in general, until everyone became cellphone users. I still remember when car phones were the toys of the rich. In a not too distant future all phones will be smartphones.

Posted by freddiemac | July 1, 2008 4:39 PM

Further proof that one of the key political and cultural divides of the era just beginning will be between Luddites who cling to outdated romantic notions of human identity and those of us who are eager to embrace the future. It's not going to break along current liberal and conservative lines, with your crunchy cons and your organic farming anticapitalist lefties teaming up against what will be an essentially libertarian/technoprogressive alliance.

Posted by Brendan Moran | July 1, 2008 4:56 PM

If you check facts constantly on your Blackberry, perhaps you could do the same when you write these posts.

Posted by James | July 1, 2008 4:56 PM

I've generally felt that anyone who questions that cell phones damage our brains -- and I'm not talking iPhones but all cells -- hasn't spent enough time with enough college students.

Posted by Sanjay | July 1, 2008 5:13 PM

"people hate iPhone users," he remarked, "because you can never have an argument about facts without them whipping out the phone and looking up the answer"

I'll concede that it is really annoying to argue with someone who has an iphone/bberry. But is it really a bad thing if I get called on my factual errors? It might be a good thing if it eventually leads me to take a more humble view of my own understanding of the world. Plus I might learn a few actual facts along the way.

Posted by southpaw | July 1, 2008 5:28 PM

I'll concede that it is really annoying to argue with someone who has an iphone/bberry

I won't. Pretty much everyone I know has observed the fact that questions of fact can generally be resolved readily with access to Google. I have never heard anyone mention that as anything less than a staggeringly positive development.

Posted by Brendan Moran | July 1, 2008 7:20 PM

"I have never heard anyone mention that as anything less than a staggeringly positive development."

Well, no doubt that conservatives don't like it (as evidenced by Ross himself). After all, conservatives don't seem to enjoy "facts" too much. Makes it harder to generate your own reality...

Posted by freddiemac | July 1, 2008 9:23 PM

I guess I spend too much time in the reality-based community.

Posted by Brendan Moran | July 1, 2008 9:47 PM

A lot of his talk had to do with the issues constant connectivity raises for deep knowledge ("people hate iPhone users," he remarked, "because you can never have an argument about facts without them whipping out the phone and looking up the answer"

I can imagine some people's aversion to anything that makes fact-checking easy and essentially instantaneous.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 2, 2008 10:03 AM

Is The iPhone Making Us Stupid?

I don't know. Do the people proposing a supermajority requirement for the Supreme Court own iPhones? If so, then I'd say there's a pretty good correlation, even if specific evidence of causation is lacking.

Posted by Just Dropping By | July 2, 2008 10:41 AM

freddiemac, do you ride public transportation in an urban center, by any chance? You'd see a bunch of lazy, weak, well-fed, unimaginative tech-dependent troglodytes going to and fro. It's like watching evolution in reverse, and every time Steve Jobs comes up with a new gadget, you and Brendan Moran, et al. run around like the opening scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And then these mean people at Aspen try to ruin your fun by suggesting there might be consequences.

I think you're too quick to discount the Atlantic essay and then claim we conservatives don't like the "facts." If technological advances encourage and allow declines in our own intellectual formation, I'd say that's worth pointing out, at least exploring. Maybe you just need a conservative to point this out for you.

Posted by Ferrell | July 2, 2008 11:06 AM

Could be the iPhone is making us more like librarians. There's a lot of facts we don't know, but we know where to look to find the answer. Seems like a good thing to me.

Posted by Greg Sanders | July 2, 2008 11:30 AM

"do you ride public transportation in an urban center, by any chance?"

Nope.

"You'd see a bunch of lazy, weak, well-fed, unimaginative tech-dependent troglodytes going to and fro."

As opposed to the lazy, weak, well-fed unimaginative tech-dependent troglodytes I see sitting on their couch in their garage drinking bud light and watching NASCAR?

"If technological advances encourage and allow declines in our own intellectual formation, I'd say that's worth pointing out, at least exploring."

I see a society that is basically post-literate having access to a more literate way of functioning. Having the iphone is really only a bridge. In 5 years it or a competitor will have much better functionality. I think a really good ebook reader will be standard, and with that will be a bloom in readership as well as increased availability to "facts". I think Matt and Megan both blogged on this phenomenon. Why do I have to point this out to conservatives? Is stating the obvious such a revelation?

Posted by freddiemac | July 2, 2008 12:57 PM

This may be slightly tangential, but I think the conflation of understanding with "facts" might be one of the unintended (negative, in my view) consequences of the information revolution, or whatever it is we're in. I'm not against factual knowledge per se, but I would question the idea that he is wise who has lots of facts. There are more things in heaven and earth than in your Google, and all that.

I think it might be worthwhile to explore the idea that much of what we don't know can't be determined one way or the other with the myriad facts available on the internet.

Posted by Miri | July 2, 2008 1:54 PM

"It's like watching evolution in reverse"

Your whole argument is based on a deeply stupid misunderstanding of evolution. You are aware, I hope, that advances in technology are part of human evolution, right? That the iPhone is as much an evolutionary adaptation as, say, a longer neck or gills or what-have-you?

Technology = tool-using = behavior = evolutionary adaptation.

Posted by Brendan Moran | July 2, 2008 5:52 PM

Brendan,

Based on what you just wrote, you do not only misunderstand evolution yourself, you may have just disproved it.

Posted by Darwin's Monkey Asshole | July 2, 2008 5:58 PM

I don't think having instant fact-checking ability is a bad thing, but I think Ross's point of "deep knowledge" is important. Knowing facts is not the same as understanding the concepts and principles behind them. I love technology, but the constant interruptions from cell-phones, multitasking, etc certainly give pause to worry. True knowledge requires long hours of study, dedication, and extended rational discourse and debate, something quite different from people hurling wikipedia facts at each other.

Posted by Anonymous | July 2, 2008 6:07 PM

*pats Darwin's Monkey Asshole on the head* That's nice. You keep thinking that.

Posted by Brendan Moran | July 2, 2008 7:14 PM

Since you don't understand it, I will.

Though I'm impressed that you have an adaptation which enables you to pat an asshole on the head.

Perhaps you are the missing link.

Posted by Darwin's Monkey Asshole | July 2, 2008 7:23 PM

I prefer to think that the people who buy iPhones are already stupid.

Posted by m00se | July 3, 2008 9:47 AM

Hey m00se, that's spelled "moose." How stupid can you be?

Posted by Adam's Apple | July 3, 2008 2:38 PM

Hey m00se, that's spelled "moose." How stupid can you be?

Posted by Adam's Apple | July 3, 2008 2:38 PM

Facts, facts, facts!!! It's how you see connections, comparisons, contrasts, how you use the facts you find that actually make them valuable. The facts in and of themselves are just mental Cheerios. That's what real reading is all about.

Posted by Ludditewoman | July 3, 2008 9:41 PM

Back in the pre-web Dark Ages (about 15-20 years ago) I used to keep a shelf of reference books in the dining room, so that when a dinner conversation became an argument over fact, we could settle it and move on to what was, for me, the more interesting part of the discussion: comparing our different interpretations of the world based upon those facts in order to reach a better understanding of it.

Now it's great to be able to consult the internet to resolve these same kinds of arguments, and I don't hesitate to do it (although I do maintain caution about believing what I find there).

But I can't help wondering whether a person's annoyance with another person's tech usage has more to do with the period of time during which the tech user is absorbed in the tech device and not in the conversation--I've noticed that there is a real discrepancy in perceived elapsed time between the person using the device and the person standing there waiting for them to finish with it. You may think it takes you a second or two to look something up, but you'd be surprised...

Posted by Barb | July 4, 2008 2:53 AM

This from Basingstoke, Hampshire, in England:
I think many are missing the point of the original posting -- perhaps because it is ever-so-slightly wrongly titled. "Is the iPhone making us ignorant?" might have been more apposite -- the point then being: does having Googlepedia on ready tap make us disinclined to proper learning and reflection?

Like Ross, I think the answer is "yes" -- and I have thought so since Google and, later, Wikipedia proved to be of such inestimable utility. However, I think humanity has always craved such utility, even if -- a hundred years ago, say, and even a thousand years ago -- people could barely describe such a utility, much less name it. Bibles and other books were chained to shelves in the earliest libraries, the better to keep them from the unwashed grasp -- literal and metaphorical -- of the masses. So thank the heavens for Bi Sheng, Goryeo and (later) Gutenburg. (And Berners-Lee?!)

Now, which would you sooner have: elite custody of and access to knowledge, a privileged few men in gowns or lab-coats or uniforms; or an open body of knowledge that can be contributed-to, challenged, accessed and learned-from by nearly everyone? (OK, even Internet-users are in the global minority, and it can be argued that that makes us a comparative elite. But we've got to draw the line somewhere...)

Bottom line: make your mark, make your generous contribution to the world's body of knowledge and wisdom, and draw graciously on the contributions of others.

(Posted from my iPhone. Not. I dream of 11 July :-)

Posted by Doublebass | July 4, 2008 5:45 AM

"Fire bad! Fire bad! Burn hand! Bad fire! Baaaad!"

It's a tool, people. It's another arrow in the quiver of our collective intellect. Having facts on hand, whether in front of a computer or on the road, can add texture and structure to our knowledge of the world.

The other day I saw a family outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. They wanted to know more about the structure (who built it? when? how tall is it?). They pulled up Wikipedia on an iPhone, and the father began to cheerily recount the story of the church, much like every parent has done for decades when reading a guidebook to his or her family.

Did he make his family less intelligent? Did he damage their understanding of the church? In fact, eavesdropping, I learned some things about St. Patrick's I didn't know myself. How can that be all bad?

And, after he was done, he said, "Hey, here's some interesting stuff on Rockefeller Center! Let's go there afterward!"

Posted by macdadi80 | July 4, 2008 9:19 AM

it's a phone. period.

Posted by savgpncl | July 5, 2008 4:17 PM