Is technology making mankind less intelligent?

Excellent question, Zac. There are entire books written on this subject, and spoiler alert: I didn't write any of them. But I think about it a lot!

Everyone would have a different answer, but mine is: technology makes us smarter in some ways, and dumber in others.

Consider a line from my favorite essay of all time - Self-Reliance - when Ralph Waldo Emerson says of the "civilized man":

"His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit..."

The essay was written almost 180 years ago (I highly recommend reading the whole thing!), but what Emerson said still rings true: as we depend on technology more and more, we replace certain functions that our brains used to be responsible for, and risk weakening those "brain muscles". Emerson cited memory and wit, but there are lots of similar examples - computer programs auto-correct our spelling so we don't need to know it as well, and television requires us to pass time without engaging with others or thinking critically. I imagine examples like this are why you're asking this question!

The truth is, though, technology enables us to accomplish A LOT more than we used to. For example, if Ralph Waldo Emerson was feeling sick and wanted to diagnose his illness, he'd have to see the local doctor in person and, if he was lucky, get some medicine (which in those days was expensive and probably not very effective!). Keep in mind that in those days, we didn't even know the real causes of many illnesses; for example, humans thought exposure to cold weather actually caused the common cold until about 60 years ago! But today, anyone can simply Google their symptoms and figure out what they have and/or go to the hospital where advanced medical professionals would quickly and easily diagnose and treat the illness and prescribe medication that insurance helps to pay for. So in this way, technology has made us smarter by increasing the wealth of knowledge we have access to - which is especially important for things like health and medicine!

See if you can think of more reasons why technology -- which includes not just machines, but the knowledge machines have allowed us to gain -- make us more knowledgeable and help us to live longer, healthier lives.

Another thought I'd like to leave you with, though, is artificial intelligence. Some experts say that the next big wave of technological growth is artificial intelligence; as we apply the computational power of computers towards things like facial recognition and self-driving cars, we will replace even more of what humans used to (or currently) do. But the truth is, it takes really smart humans to create this cutting-edge technology, just like it always took really smart humans to make every invention and discovery in human history! So, what I might leave you with is that technology doesn't necessarily make us less intelligent as a species, but it certainly does change how we think and what we think about.

I hope this is helpful! If you are really interested in this subject, I recommend reading any book by Yuval Noah Harari. He's a very smart person who thinks about the future a lot!