We don’t constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.
Interpretation
Our memories enhance our intelligence, but relying solely on outside resources can diminish our mental capabilities.
In this quote, Nicholas G. Carr emphasizes the importance of personal memory in enriching our intelligence. He warns that while the internet can assist our memory, over-reliance on it can weaken our cognitive abilities and diminish the depth of knowledge we hold within ourselves.
In practice
In a speech about education technology, one might quote Carr to emphasize the importance of developing personal memory.
What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.
It is not the desire of new acquisitions, but the glory of conquests, that fires the soldier's breast; as indeed the town is seldom worth much, when it has suffered the devastations of a siege.
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
In the presence of your Satguru, knowledge flourishes; sorrow diminishes; without any reason joy wells up; lack diminishes, abundance dawns and all talents manifest
I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.
I don't like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone's life is different, and everyone's journey is different.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
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