The Atlantic had an article a couple years ago asking “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Did I read it? Nope. Because it smelled like an idea concocted more to raise people’s eyebrows than to raise their intelligence. Is that a good reason to not have read it? Nope. Did the article actually contain something interesting? I have no idea–I didn’t read it.

All that to say that I can think of one way Google is making us smarter. Before Google and the internet, the only thing you had to do to win a playground or barroom argument was to intimidate whomever it was you were arguing with. I don’t even mean physically. You just had to sound confident or right without necessarily being right. Try to do that now. It’ll work for about 15 minutes until someone looks up whatever it is you’re arguning about on their IPhone. You can’t intimidate the internet.

There are people who still try and power their way through arguments but, if you’re keeping track, you’ll notice they’re all above a certain age. It’s a bygone era that left us in about 2002.

Think about how this shifts the balance of social power. People used to be able to get by on sounding smart–now they actually have to be smart. S’probably a good thing