David Brooks writes a piece entitled: “The Outsourced Brain.” Finally, one might think, a confession.
Nope.
Instead:
>Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted exclusively to the topic of commuter routes.
Later:
>Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing.
Right. “Losing.”
For the rest of us, the availability of information seems to suggest that we are responsible for knowing more, not less–with great knowledge, after all, comes great responsibility.
It has been said that the person who loses her faith perhaps never really had it in the first place; that given, we might say that the columnist who “loses” his thinking was perhaps never thinking in the first place.
Isn’t Brooks basically replaying Thamus’ argument against writing from the Phaedrus?