Is the Internet making us dumber?

Matthew Ingram in Gigacom gave an interesting post "In the Internet making us dumber?" Guess we've all heard this before, and it's pertinent to this blog, because if we are using Web 2.0 tools we may be adding to this reliance on the Internet...
Matthew Ingram begins :
"Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? The Wall Street Journal put together a couple of provocative essays this weekend looking at that question: one from Nick Carr, whose most recent book The Shallows argues that the internet is making us less attentive and in general less intelligent, and the other from Clay Shirky, whose latest book Cognitive Surplus argues that the internet is on balance a good thing for both individuals and society."

From the debate on the post it seems to be a matter of which you think is the more significant :
The decline in the people's ability to reflect.
The collisions and connections in ideas made possible by the interent.