Clay Shirky’s “Does the internet make you smarter?” has shown me how similar the affects that invention of the internet and printed books had on the generation of people that used it. I wouldn’t have usually seen this similarity because books and the Internet are not associated together as much due to their physical features. Many people, like Martin Luther and Edgar Allan Poe, during the printing press thought that books were a great evil and were going to make the younger generations stupid. His essay showed me how it is often that the increase in freedom to create and consume media would make younger generations stupider is what scares people. Clay Shirky mentions that this type of fear has been seen throughout the printing press era as the production of erotic novels and can also be seen today as the pointless videos that we consume on the Internet everyday. Even though both medians have their early negative effects, however the Internet may soon evolve into something far more better than what it is at this point of its era.