Jamais Cascio's "Get Smarter"

Jamais Cascio's "Get Smarter"

In his "Get Smarter," Jamais Cascio urges his readers to change themselves and as the title of the article suggests, "get smarter". Cascio begins his "Get Smarter" by mentioning the long passed eruption of Mount Toba. Cascio states that this eruption forced the world into such a harsh climate that it forced humans to evolve or more simply, "to get smarter." Cascio leads this opening idea into a statement that men evolve through the process of becoming smarter. Cascio finally connects this statement of intelletual evolution with modern life stating that if life will be harsh in the future then we as humans must become smarter in order to overcome the harsh environment. Cascio concludes his opening section with another statement in which he gives power to the individual stating that the individual does not need to wait for "evolution" to make humanity smarter but instead can make themselves smarter. Cascio validates this last statement saying that the process of men making themselves smarter (which he calls "intelligence augmentation") has already been smarter through many examples such as: the Internet, science, and drugs. Cascio continues his argument by briefly discussing the advance of technology and how it benefits humanity. Cascio follows this discussion by mentioning the ideas of internet skeptic Nicholas Carr and his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" as well as Linda Stone who worries that men have obtained a sense of "continuous partial attention," or a sense of having too many activities present at once. Cascio brings these two authors together into an idea which he calls "continuous partial attention-deficit disorder" (which he shortens as "technology-induced ADD"). Cascio finally concludes his response to skepticism by suggesting that technology-induced ADD is only a temporary side effect of the vast amount of available information, and that eventually men will create a solution to this problem and make information gathering more efficient for the individual. Cascio continues his article by telling people how they should become smarter. According to Cascio, due to the constantly changing technology, humans should not try to drastically "update" themselves for fear of becoming quickly "obsolete." Instead Cascio urges people to use "external technology" to boost themselves so that the technology they use is still beneficient and replacable when better advancements are created. Continuing his argument, he discusses the usage of drugs to make people more focused and talks about his own experience with using them. Following his discussion of the advantage of drugs, Cascio discusses the advatages and weaknesses of artificial intelligence. Cascio states that while smarter artificial intelligence is possible it can never exceed the exponenially expanding human mind and that humans are better off with their own reason and with "robots on the side." For Cascio, the robot is just another helpful tool which despite its advances will never exceed the abilities of men. Cascio concludes his argument by describing what he believes life will be like in the future. He believes that in the future men will have greatly overcome "partial attention," will have a larger pool of information to absorb from, and that our intellectual debates and differences will become much more active. Cascio believes that humanity as a whole will inevitably advance and "get smarter" the only question will be that of when and who will "unreasonably" resist.

Cascio seems to discuss many of Nicholas Carr's skepticisms. In his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Carr addresses many fears toward the growing technology. Carr's main fear is that the internet is changing the way that men think in a way that is destroying their ability to think deeply. Cascio directly responds to this fear by suggesting that the current internet system is still primitive and, due to the large quantiy of information, forces the individual into a sense of "partial attention." Cascio's solution to this side effect is to use what is available until the technology advances allowing men to absorb more information quicker. Carr also fears the achievement of Google's mission statement, "The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people---or smarter." Carr specifically fears that the creation of such a device will replace the human mind with something which only gives answers and does not think deeply about anything. Cascio also addresses the fear of artificial intelligence surpassing the human mind through two descriptions. First, Cascio discusses the advantages of technology which customizes itself for the individual and how it can benefit that same individual through its enhanced knowledge. Then, he states that the human mind is always advancing and getting smarter and will therefore always be better than any artificial mind that we create. ("As intelligence augmentation allows us to make ourselves smarter, and then smarter still, AI may turn out to be just a sideshow: we could always be a step ahead.")

Carr also provides one more criticism of the internet, in which he states that because of the internet's need and desire for money, the internet also innundates individuals with many advertisements and distractions. Therefore due to necessity would not the distractions continue to exist and plague the attention of simple knowledge seekers?