Blog 4 Carr's Crystallized Intelligence 2

At the beginning of Carr’s speech, he indicates that smartphones becoming an essential part in our life. We use phones to receive different information. And we check our phones all the time, even when nothing’s going on, which is extremely time wasted. In addition, when we work in front of the computer, our eyes are always focus on the screen, which can distribute our attention and decrease our working efficiency. 

 In the middle of his speech, when our brains transform information into knowledge , which allows us to think conceptually. He gives two different memories. One is Long-term memory, which is  enormous capacity. And the opposite is working memory, which includes very very tiny capacity. The long-term memory is similar with “crystallized intelligence” , which is pointed in David Brooks’ article. They both stored in long-term memory, and incredibly deep thinking of what you learned. Also the ability of making analyses and consolida another information. 

Furthermore, he gives an example that is basic test of cognitive function to compare tow different groups of people. One is who often spend most time online, which he called heavy multitaskers. And the other group is who has less online time, he called light multitaskers. Reachers have found that the heavy multitaskers did worse than light multitaskers. The heavy multitaskers have less capacity of distinguishing important information from trivia. He concludes that “ the more time we spend jumping from bit of information to bit of information every couple of minutes during our day the less we worry about how important something is in the more we are simply attracted to whatever’s new.”  

At the end of the speech, Carr gives another instance, scientist looked examined 50 different experiments to see how different social media influenced the way we think. Although they found the benefit in our life, which is we can transform our focus more quickly, we also lose  fundamental aspects of the highest forms of human thinking, which is critical thinking, depth thinking and so on. Moreover, he said that “we are sacrificing our ability to determine for ourselves what our minds focus on what we pay attention to.”  As the result, internet will lead us to sacrifice depth thinking. 

In conclusion, as far as I am concerned, Carr gives three details to support his idea, which is “ Google is making us stupid”. Firstly, long-term memory has enormous ability to consolidate another information. The second supporting detail is light multitaskers have better cognitive of distinguishing what is important. Last, we will lose our fundamental qualities, which is depth thinking and critical thinking  in the internet. 

Connecting Carr’s speech and David’s article, we will find that crystallized intelligence is also stored in long-term memory. Additionally, crystallized intelligence is less likely to multitask or browse for keywords. It is slowness of solitary reading.  And it also has ability to make analogies and comparisons about things we have learned before, which allows us to think deeper. For my personal view, Carr may prefer crystallized intelligence.