In Clay Shirky’s Does the Internet Make You Smarter?, he presents many cons related to the Internet that opposition would argue, but refutes each one perfectly. Shirky argued that the past was not as peachy as older generations are trying to make it seem, using a quote by Martin Luther, saying that “the multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever of writing”(3). The Internet actually has similar cons to it as books do. Yeah, the internet comes with ridiculous videos, theories, and opinions, but so do books. What Shirky made me realize that I did not realize before was that “our cognitive surplus(free time) is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects”(2). Rather than watching tv, we are exploring the Web and essentially finding out about a plethora of information so easily that we before were not able to do. Of course when there is an evolution in means of creating material, there is going to be “throwaway material” as Shirky calls it(5). However, the same occurred when more andmore books were being written in the past, so to handle this, we must find a healthy medium to Internet use, similar to Nicholas Carr’s solution in Is Google Making Us Stupid.