It is making us lazier, but it also gives us the ability to be more informed. I mean I for one am happy that I no longer need an encyclopedia to look up some random fact or learn more about a topic, and that I have that same power at my fingertips.
Now it also is your duty to remain informed about whether or not what you are finding on the internet is worthwhile information.
And no, I don't think that being able to find information quickly on the internet makes you're memory shorter somehow. It may make you more reliant on the internet for the finer details though, but you could say the same thing about a regular encyclopedia. Acting like the internet is somehow an inherently different form of information than a library catalog just because one requires less effort than the other is simply misguided.
Information is information, whatever form it takes. The internet is just a medium.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
