Getting stupider in the age of intelligence

It was almost 11 pm, minutes before the pages had to go to press. I was holding the A3 print of my page, waiting for the desk head’s clearance before I could lock it and send it down to pre-press. She asked me a fact I didn’t have. I opened her computer and looked it up.

“Internet has made you fellows lazy,” she said. “Back when I was a reporter, we had to memorise all of it. Names of the chief ministers, the chairpersons of the nationalised banks, the whole lot.”

Eighteen years ago, I was too green to understand this comparison. Over the years, our collective dependency on the internet has only increased. I have seen fellow journalists double-checking spellings and facts on the internet that they can reproduce correctly in their sleep. I have been a part of several journeys—and heard about many more—where the GPS led us to a closed road, often against our own better judgement. All of this came into sharper focus last week with the news of three climbers and their ordeal.