Society never advances

In his essay "Self Reliance", Ralph Waldo Emerson makes the daring claim that society never advances, "it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other." At first glance, this quote was really too bleak for me to try and accept-but after some consideration, I've come to realize just how true it really is. In class we read an article titled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which discussed how, although the Internet has opened boundless opportunities in terms of accessing information and sharing files, it's actually making our minds function differently, and not necessarily a good different. The author describes the effect the google generation has had on him as such, "Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do." By having so much access to information, we are less able to fully appreciate any specific one piece. Before, information was less accessible-which meant that what people were able to have, they analyzed in depth. Just think about early America-Any pamphlets or books people could get their hands on they would carefully read and discuss together at the local coffee shops. However now that we have access to more knowledge then we know what to do with, we read for a broader knowledge on all topics; rather then analyzing the literature in depth, we merely skim the surface; A wikipedia summary will suffice for most of our needs. So I don't think that we can necessarily call the internet an advancement-We've gained just as much as we've lost.