Today, there is widespread access to information. People can use search engines to have almost any question answered and read about nearly any fact they desire, instantly and on a whim. But does that mean that we are more intelligent? What is the difference between intelligence and merely amassing information?
Perhaps the concept of wisdom provides an answer. When one asks what wisdom is, one is often pointed toward past generations. Yet being knowledgeable does not necessarily mean being wise. Having the ability to explain a subject from memory does not, by itself, mean that one is intelligent.
Intelligence, perhaps, can be understood as knowledge and wisdom together: knowing what to do, and what not to do, with the information one has obtained. It involves understanding the causes and effects of what one has learned, and accepting some responsibility for how that knowledge is used within the surrounding environment and the world.
But today, the retrieval of information has become so instantaneous that there is hardly enough time to reflect on why the information is important. This is especially true in the space between searches, clicks, and further queries about topics that may, in and of themselves, be pointless to learn about.
Is knowledge something to acquire merely as a pastime, according to whatever happens to interest us in the moment? Or are knowledge and information a gift? And is understanding an ability that is often traded for the ease and convenience of having everything immediately available as a commodity?
When one observes society in modernity, it is often called an advancement of technology when everyone has access to all the answers. But is that alone a reason to call it an advancement? Perhaps the true advancement would be the ability to possess knowledge and understand its significance.
Is this something every person is capable of doing? Systems have been created for the easy retrieval of information. But much can be understood by observing the systems created to ease and facilitate an understanding of that information’s significance.
Yes, we have had ways of understanding facts, definitions, statistics, and explanations in the past: universities and academic programs. But they themselves are a perfect example of placing constraints on what should be learned, who can learn, and who could not.
Perhaps the dismantling of this system, by allowing everyone to have access to all information, may not have advanced us at all, but instead taken us aback. There is an illusion that speed, ease, and efficiency are what produce intelligence, or that they are similar or synonymous with intelligence.
Was this merely an assumption?
Yes, search engines and artificial intelligence can answer questions almost immediately. But this same speed is exactly what can make these systems shallow. Our relationship with knowledge becomes more hollow. People stop investigating once they have found an answer that sounds plausible.
In the past, the difficulty of finding information fostered remembrance, reflection, and comparison. Today, we move so rapidly from one answer to the next that there is almost no opportunity for these things to take place.
There are great uses for this capability, for this function of systems. But when does it become a problem? Does it become a problem when it starts to make knowledge feel disposable?
This may foster forgetfulness, and perhaps even forms of ingratitude. Indeed, we might become skilled at using these systems and functions without becoming skilled at evaluating them.
Evaluation. How should evaluation take place? What is the measure by which something is evaluated? What if the first answer, or the first search result, is not even the best answer? What happens when the information being served is shaped by popularity, optimization, authority, or presentation?
A confident explanation may sound beautifully worded while still being inaccurate, whereas a complicated truth may be less attractive, or even unavailable.
For that matter, a weakness of the system—a misuse of its function—is not necessarily that technology gives us too much information. The issue, the danger, is that it gives us the impression that every question or query has been settled simply because an answer has been given.
True evaluation is, in actuality, often in contrast to what takes place within these systems. A slower understanding that emerges from experience can cultivate true evaluation. Things like critical thinking and the true use of judgment are what make intellect intellect.
Some things cannot be understood simply because one has read about them or heard about them. Meaning is often revealed gradually through experience, such as failure, leadership, and, perhaps most effectively, moral compromise.
This does not mean that experience always produces wise people. Indeed, people repeat the same mistakes, sometimes for their entire lives. But experience can reveal the difference between knowing something internally and living with its consequences, as opposed to simply assuming that something is true.
In the absence of certainty, there is something of value as well. Modernity often encourages the expectation that one should always have an answer, or should always be able to find one. Yet many serious decisions involve acting on incomplete evidence or even competing values.
This introduces, or points toward, another value of life. Choosing a career, caring for someone, responding to a crisis, or deciding whether to forgive someone requires something more than the retrieval of information. These things require a mature intelligence—one that has the ability to act responsibly without pretending to possess certainty.
Though technology can genuinely expand our understanding, it is too simple to portray information systems as wholly negative. The same technology has allowed humans to discover things that would otherwise remain invisible.
Scientific instruments, medical databases, advanced modeling, and global communication have all increased humanity’s ability to use information and exercise intelligence more effectively.
Researchers can collaborate on complex studies across borders and build upon one another’s work at a speed that was unprecedented in past generations. In these cases, technology does more than simply provide facts. It expands and enables forms of understanding that no individual could achieve alone.
But the question of whether we are becoming more intelligent or merely more informed is still unanswered.
If intelligence means access to facts, technical knowledge, capabilities, and problem-solving, then the systems we have created today have clearly expanded our human capacities.
But if intelligence also involves judgment, wisdom, autonomy, empathy, and the ability to recognize uncertainty, then progress becomes much less obvious.
We might be developing one kind of intelligence while neglecting another. We may be becoming faster at finding answers, but perhaps not better at deciding which questions deserve our attention in the first place.
Though we might be becoming more capable in certain ways, that does not necessarily mean that we are becoming more capable of living with intelligence or taking responsibility for our choices.
Perhaps the more important measure of intelligence is not how much we know, or how much information we are able to grasp, but how carefully we are able to live with what we know.
And perhaps even more than that, how carefully we are able to live with what we do not know.
Is this the intelligence that we might be neglecting?