You might not know it to look at me, but I used to be pretty smart. In fact, if it doesn’t sound too immodest, I could even say that I was known for being smart, which is better than actually being smart. Everybody seemed to know how smart I was. People I had never met before somehow knew it on saying hello. My reputation for braininess had preceded me, I know not how. I remember once I went for a job interview where, out of the blue, I was asked if I had ever met anyone more intelligent than I. Stunned by such a stupid question, I actually tried to answer it. That’s how smart I was. In other words, not very. But if, today, I would know better than to try to answer a question like that, it is nevertheless true that I was in other ways quite a lot brighter then than I am now. Now, I can almost feel my brainpower diminishing by the day. People no longer greet me with that slightly intimidated look that is the reward — if you can call it a reward — of those with a reputation, however undeserved, for intelligence.
Read the rest of James Bowman on the pursuit of wisdom in the age of the Internet.
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