The Internet will make you smarter. Yes, it must be true if the experts say so, though I feel my brain turning to a gooey mush every time I get trapped in a merry-go-round of links and the barrage of information that I feel compelled to follow every day.

The claim about intelligence and the Internet was made through a bi-annual survey of 895 experts and users conducted by the Imagining the Internet Centre at Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet and American Life project. About 371 of those surveyed were considered "experts", defined as "prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers".

The survey found that 76 percent agreed with the statement: "By 2020, people's use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid."

The Carr reference is to his cover story in the August 2008 edition of Atlantic Monthly headlined: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" In response to the survey Carr has repeated his claim: "What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."

OK. We will be superficial, or remain so, but have more knowledge at hand. Many of us who get by with the bare glimmerings of intelligence will be happy with that state of affairs. It's better to have more intelligence, than a little, if accumulating a great big ball of knowledge is equated with intelligence.

Apparently, reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge will also be improved. About 65 percent agreed with the statement: "By 2020 it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge."

This is obviously a divisive debate since 32 percent said that by 2020 "it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge." What a wonderfully ambiguous phrase that is: the "rendering of knowledge". One can tear it apart or give it back to someone, but in the end you will have rendered it away.

Besides, I always thought civilisation was going downhill anyway as reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge was in dire straits when I was in high school 30 years ago, at least according to my teachers. I suppose the teachers of today are writing the same worn epitaph, while books and the Internet continue to thrive.

I like the comment by survey participant David Ellis of York University, Toronto. He defines the Google problem as one of encouraging intellectual laziness rather than one of promoting stupidity.

It is a big problem in university classrooms he says.

"Unless pushed in the right direction, students will opt for the top 10 or 15 hits as their research strategy," he writes. "And it's the students most in need of research training who are the least likely to avail themselves of more sophisticated tools like Google Scholar. Like other major technologies, Google's search functionality won't push the human intellect in one predetermined direction. It will reinforce certain dispositions in the end-user: stronger intellects will use Google as a creative tool, while others will let Google do the thinking for them."

Right on, I say. Really, he is saying teachers have to keep abreast of the technology so as to push their students down the right road. As in the past, good students exploit the libraries available to them.

Others are content to surf the top levels of the Dewey decimal system...er...top level links. Those are the ones teachers have to work on, while helping the others dig even deeper.

Download the full report on the survey, Future of the Internet IV - 2010, at www.elon.edu/predictions It's a good read.

Send any comments to Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com