Does internet help or inhibit innovation? Internet indeed helps innovation. The proponents of the other side are not so sure. They say it depends on how much and for what purpose we use the internet. Their worry is that we are becoming overwhelmingly dependent on the internet. They say that the internet shifts our cognitive functions from searching for information inside the mind towards searching outside the mind. Some think internet is blocking our ability to look back; “The bottomless reservoirs of the present have blinded us to the positive and therapeutic aspects of the past.” The way calculators have reduced the role of pure computation and simple arithmetic, some think, internet is reducing the role of our thought process. Some seem to believe that internet is necessary and useful, but not sufficient to change the mind.

Let us say during one of our discussions, a promising idea emerges. Someone among us, based on his quick internet search, says that the idea is promising but not new. The idea has already been discovered by someone a few years ago, and it failed (for whatever reasons) at the implementation stage. Since there are few takers for failed ideas, the innovative idea gets dropped. Had the idea worked, even then it has no future now as its fate is already sealed in the hands of a few. The “first –mover advantage” must have already created the “barriers to entry”. A number of seemingly promising ideas get crushed this way, says Neal Stephenson, the author of The Baroque Cycle. Often, the second crack at the idea works better, but it doesn’t get the requisite opportunity. Undoubtedly the internet has freed us from the burden of commuting to attain literacy. But it is also making our thinking more fragmented. Information overload has begun to affect our reflection and introspection. Perhaps, slow and steady pace of literature search might allow a good idea to survive. “What if that person in the corner hadn’t been able to do a Google search?” asks Stephenson. The unintended consequences of the internet are our ability to take risks, feels Jaron Lanier. Overburdened with so much real time information and driven by the next quarterly report, today’s manager finds little time for innovation. In this environment, the best a manager can do is to develop small improvements to existing systems, like city planners painting bicycle lanes on the streets as a gesture toward solving our energy problems. “Any strategy that involves crossing a valley — accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance — will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure,” writes Stephenson.

When human intelligence is supplemented by computational intelligence, should we not expect the potential for innovation to become supplemented as well? We live in a world where information is cheap, but meaning is expensive, says George Dyson. Dyson sees no danger from the advanced machines. “The danger is that we are losing our intelligence if we rely on computers instead of our own minds. On a fundamental level, we have to ask ourselves: Do we need human intelligence? And what happens if we fail to exercise it?” is how Dyson looks at this problem. He says we need to protect our self-reliant individual intelligence to survive in a hostile environment. He cautions us not to surrender into dependency on other forms of intelligence.

(The writer is a biotechnologist and ED, Birla Institute of Scientific Research Jaipur)