How can the Internet foster collective intelligence if it is simultaneously rewiring our brains to make us less intelligent? In their recent efforts to try to make sense of the cultural and political implications of today’s dramatically reconfigured media ecosystem, Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows set forth two provocative arguments that stand somewhat in opposition to one another. Both authors have explored this terrain before—Shirky with Here Comes Everybody, his account of the various ways in which the networking power of the Internet is facilitating new modes of production and social organization; and Carr with The Big Switch, his analysis of the evolving public utility model that is increasingly characterizing access to computing power. The two authors have engaged each other in an online debate on the Encyclopedia Britannica’s blog over whether the overall cultural effects of the Internet are positive or negative—a step forward or back for human intelligence—so it seems appropriate to consider their latest works together.
