How The Internet Tricks You Into Thinking You Are Smarter

…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.  

Donald Rumsfeld

Humans have always sought ways to enhance the finite capacity of our brains, in particular relying on other resources to hold information for us. Prior to the Internet, we depended on our co-species to share the immense burden of information required to successfully navigate the world- such as which plants were poisonous and which were edible. We continually updated these shared banks of knowledge through our ongoing face-to-face interactions, and as we evolved, we supplemented our human memory banks with tools such as books. When we source information from other people, and even when we rely on non-human sources, such as books, there is no confusion between what we know and what the source is providing- we are aware of the limits of our own knowledge.
In contrast, new research has revealed that when we use the Internet, in best Rumsfeld tradition, we no longer know what we know and what we don’t.
By Susan Greenfield Ph.D./ continue