After having read the essay, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?*”, I was immediately overwhelmed with thoughts about this particular topic. Clay Shirky, the writer of this essay, approaches this topic in a very comparative manner. He points out how the bulk of publicly available digital media being created by amateurs in today’s world, is comparable to the way the invention of the printing press made it possible for the flood of mediocre at best, contemporary literature to circulate. I will give you my summarized interpretation of Shirky’s essay and evaluate both sides to this argument. The argument being made here is that since anybody with computer access can type and upload digital media, is the information quality becoming more and more questionable as time passes? In the 16th century, foes of print never imagined that new norms would be built around all this newly abundant contemporary literature. Shirky says, “Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.” We are living through a very similar experience due to the power of the internet. As humans, we have a vast cognitive surplus. In the 20th century, we used a lot of our free time watching TV. Now we have started to devote a large portion of our time to the internet. It took over 100 million hours of human thought to create Wikipedia. Some of that information is questionable, but just think about the positive impact this has on people who get legitimate information from this source. According to separate research, reading is an unnatural act. We have been trained to be literate by investing amazing resources. It is up to us as humans, to do the same thing with how we use computers and digital technology. I personally think the internet can make us smarter if used in a positive way. I also understand how it can make us lazy and dumb if not used to its educational potential.