Pseudo-Intellectual

An intellectual has been defined as one who, because he/she is an expert in one area, assumes he/she is by extension an expert in everything. (Noam Chosmky’s generalizing of linguistics to politics comes to mind.)

The pseudo-intellectual, however, an actual expert in no area, professes to therefore be an expert in whatever area he/she happens to be professing about at that very moment. The Cognitive Dissident has no problem being categorized as such. Of course, I make no pretensions about my lack of pretension, owing in no small part to my Ivy League “pedigree” (Penn BA, Columbia MA)--possibly because said pedigree is all I have left to hang on to.

Anyway, I found it interesting enough that Atlantic Monthly dedicated its July/August cover story to how the internet is changing the way our brains work (or, in their parlance, whether “Google[was] making us Stoopid”). Several historical parallels were drawn. To make it ridiculously simple: when writing became widespread, there was worry that people would stop trying to memorize information and use their brains less. When the printing press was invented, there was worry that people would stop writing information down and use their brains less. Similar things happened with the advent of photography, moving pictures, radio, and television. In short, it has always been believed that there is a directly inverse relationship between the accessibility of information and the quality of either a) the use to which the information can be put, b) the quality of the people accessing/using the information, or c) both.

In other words, the internet is making everyone a potential pseudo-intellectual.

All this would merely prove that the internet has changed nothing beyond the speed with which all of this occurs. Irrespective of the internet’s actual impact on our collective cognitive function, it is highly unlikely that there will be much of a shift in the proportion between true intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals. And to those who would add moral or religious complaints to the socio-intellectual ones, let me quote Scripture (Ecclesiastes 7:10): “Don’t say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not ask wisely about this.”

In other words: nostalgia is nothing more than a disease. Trust me. Google it.