How dumb are we? - Thanks to the Internet, dumb and dumber

Then there was the Atlantic's article that made waves last month, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" We've become a nation of 'skimmers.' We're impatient; our time is important. It's difficult to commit to reading long blocks of text, absolutely (scroll down, LULZ). It's even become difficult to listen to a song from start to finish, much less an entire album: I think we can thank mp3s for that.

On the other hand, though, I think it's rather premature to start sounding the alarms. Things really aren't so bleak. I definitely read more now than ever. Like most people who toy with the internet, I use Current, Digg, and Reddit almost daily for scouting out new reading material. I check in on Slate, Salon, and the gossip blogs (uh huh!) religiously. But instead of taking a newspaper in to my bathroom, I bring my laptop -- I've met other people who are willing to cop to the same.

And although a lot of people lampoon Wikipedia for its anyone-can-edit policies, Wikipedia is a valuable resource that I read several times a week. It's like reading an encyclopedia or dictionary for fun. Me, getting stupider? No way.

Our culture has moved from 'disposable' to 'modular.' For instance, while it's true that I read fewer books now, I do read magazine articles and web entries voraciously. Current has compartmentalized, short-form programming that I appreciate. I can reconfigure my leisure time as I like, just the way I like to reconfigure my modular, stackable shelving.

A couple years ago, Steven Johnson wrote a book called /Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter./ While it's true that people read fewer and fewer books, television and video games are becoming 'smarter.' Where television programming once meant each episode of a program was a very compartmentalized 'one-off,' ready for standalone viewing and syndication, television programming now employs extremely convoluted, long-form narratives. People are adept at following such narratives in a way they never could have thirty years ago, and in that regard, we're simply smarter. DVR and the internet allow viewers to follow the intricate serialized plotlines of Lost, the Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, or Deadwood, on our own time.

And that kind of patience is, frankly, the antithesis of stupidity or lack-of-focus. I think we've become 'skimmers' because we now refuse to submit to the schedules of others. We demand to manage our own time. I skim because I know I can come back and read something more carefully later. I don't need to sit down and listen to a cassette from start to finish anymore, or purchase an entire album only to listen to my favorite hit track; I can generate my own playlist, thank you. I don't need to rush home from work to catch my favorite television show -- I don't need to watch it on its air date at all.

In this information society, our free time is allocated in a very new way. Rather than having spare time only at the end of a workday, we have patches of spare time throughout the day (but the workday, in turn, is longer). So we demand that media be modular, to fit our lifestyles. We haven't become dumb. We've become efficient.

here are some stupid americans, they are most likely liberal dummycrats

Well when the president just spends his time F-ing up everything, what do you expect?