The other day, an over-the-top platform suggested for me a Web series called “How to get away with murder”, based on my recent views. I immediately turned to my trusted adviser, the Internet search, to read reviews about the series. As I started to type the title of the series, the search engine immediately gave me a list of choices to select: “how to get pregnant”, “how to get periods immediately”, “how to get COVID-19 vaccination certificate” and so on. I was attracted towards the third choice since I had not got the certificate yet.
After several minutes of searching and clicking on multiple tabs on COVID certificate, hyperlinks on the state’s pandemic control measures, images on statistics about upcoming COVID waves, the mandatory WHO website and several conspiracy theories about COVID, I realised that I had forgotten my primary intention of searching. It was like going through a cavalcade of many tableaux but not able to focus on any one. It’s the same experience that you get on a conducted tour wherein you get a glimpse of everything, but nothing completely about anything.
Has the Internet made us less intelligent? Possible, since it impedes our thinking process. The Internet prompts and suggests many things, but blinds us with its offerings. Even before we think, it shows us multiple options to choose. Often these choices are the popular ones, or the ones selected based on our previous searches. Our previous selections are usually our favourite ones, which makes us follow the trails like rats following Pied Piper. Even if we stick to watching one, the nefarious “auto-play” feature automatically plays the next video even before we recognise. Or the next episode of the Web series plays within a few seconds even before we come out of the trance. As if a master chef is sending us our favourite delicacies one after the other in sequence.
The Artificial Intelligence of video channels, search engines, social media and OTTs do not allow us to think. After a period of time, like a mind master, it decides on what we want and what we have to watch. Political affiliations, communal hatred, regional and religious biases, fan base and racial prejudices are often promulgated through these Artificial Intelligence networks on social media, leading to outrage and polarisation.
The other feature of the Internet which can hinder our intellectual growth is its plethora of information. This is actually a paradox. While the Internet provides a huge repository of information to build our knowledge, I believe that our intellect is becoming restricted to what we can search on our smartphones, at that particular moment. The Internet spoon-feeds the information but do we assimilate all the information? This is similar to seeking the address of a particular place. Previously, we used to find the way through the many roads by creating a map in our brain. Now, the smart-maps have made us geographically challenged. We don’t bother to remember the directions to a particular place anymore. We follow what the app tutors us to do. Now, without the app, many of us feel lost and handicapped.
Knowledge is accumulation of information and, intelligence is using this knowledge effectively. The brain retains the acquired knowledge by the linkage of neuronal pathways, which get stronger by linking different information. The more relatable and more repeated an information is, it gets strongly wired in our brain, making us remember the information and use them at the appropriate moment. But now we hardly task our brain with such challenges, and we are increasingly dependent on technology for even simpler stuff. Remember the days we used to remember the phone numbers of at least 10 of our family members. Now if one can know the phone number of the spouse, it is an achievement. Simple mathematical functions have been removed from our routine, and have been elegantly replaced by the smartphone calculator. How many birthdays of our beloved ones do we remember now? The pleasure we get by looking forward to that day and wishing them at the stroke of 12 is unparalleled. Now we are prompted by the calendar apps and social media reminders, and wishing a friend on a birthday has become mechanical.
How much do we multi-task our brain? People of the older generation would be running multiple to-do things in their brain while performing a task. But now we keep a “to-do” list app, multiple alarms, email reminders, periodic pop-offs, automated pays, and so on for everything, while keeping the brain idling. Writing a nice email or an article is no longer intuitive and thoughtful, but prompted by suggestions by the AI-driven email app. The in-built dictionary “auto-corrects” our mistakes and we hardly give a thought to the grammatical or spelling correction we made. While perfecting the Artificial Intelligence of our smartphones, our intellectual growth remains stunted.
The biggest strength of humans which allowed us to evolve much rapidly than other animals is the brain. It is a supercomputer with an unparalleled ability to take information, assimilate, correlate, retain and express. Of late, the brain’s job has slowly been taken over by the Internet and smartphones. They have become like our external brain — a hard drive with information in hand. The Internet “knows” more about us than what we know about ourselves based on our search history and views on social media. It knows our likes and dislikes and feeds us more of our “likes”, blinkering us to the other side. It does not allow us to reflect, think and act. I am afraid that we are losing our intellect and knowledge to the Internet. In the past two decades, the Internet has given a huge impetus to human communication and technical growth in every sphere of our lives. But like every other technological innovation, we need to realise the pitfalls of the Internet before it makes our brain redundant.
