Have you ever been reading online, and just cannot concentrate? If you have, you're not alone. American Author, Nicholas Carr was a Harvard graduate, who wrote "Is Google making us Stupid." This non-fiction news article informed us about how modern day technology affects our learning or reading. With all this information Carr, explains how google is making us stupid. Nicholas Carr uses Ethos, which is an appeal to authority and credibility. He uses Pathos, which is an appeal to your emotions. He also uses logos, an appeal to logic and reason. Nicholas Carr developed his thesis by including ethos, pathos, and logos. In this article, Carr uses a lot of Ethos to help prove his point. “For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet” (Carr 2). Carr experiences what we feel as well, he states that he uses the internet just as much as we do. He includes this quote or Etho so we don’t feel like he doesn't know how much we depend on the internet. “The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer” (Carr 2). By this, he would mean they he uses the web a …show more content…
Carr provides us scientific information that proves his point. ““We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged” (Carr 3). Carr gives us information from Tufts University, that contribute to his point. This information tells us that the internet weakens our capacity for reading. That is what Carr is saying, that’s the point of all of this. Carr wrote this so he can inform us how google in affecting
Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, Nicholas Carr in his article, Is Google is making us stupid?, addresses his beliefs that the internet is creating artificial intelligence as it effects our mind and the way we think. Throughout the article Carr supports this claim with rhetorical devices as well as Aristotelian appeals. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from a scene in the movie A Space Odyssey, then uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by conceding to opposition and stating appropriate vocabulary. In the article he compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people as a whole. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and
In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Carr concerns about spending too much time on web, making people lose the patient and ability to read and think and changing people’s thinking behaviors. He gives so many points: he can not read lengthy article used to be easy; many author begin to feel that too much reading online let them hard to read and absorb a longish article; we put efficiency and immediacy above understanding when we read; The circuits in brain has been altered by reading habit.
Nicolas Carr believes that the internet effects cognition. He assumes that it shapes the way we think. In Nicolas Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” there is a direct correlation between Taylorism and google’s mission of creating “a utopia of perfect efficiency,” robbing humans of deep thinking, resulting in the depletion of learning to articulate the minds erratic consciousness, and of its attention span.
Like Gladwell, Nicholas Carr believes the internet has negative effects. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr attempts to show as the internet becomes our primary source of information, it diminishes the ability to read books and extensive research. Carr goes on to give a very well researched account of how text on the internet is designed make browsing fast and profitable. He describes how the design for skimming affects our thinking skills and attention spans. He wraps up his argument by describing what we are losing in the shift toward using the internet as our main information source. Carr suggests the learning process that occurs in extensive research and through reading is lost. While the learning process can be beneficial to scholars and intellectuals, not everyone has the capability to follow through with it. The internet offers an education that anyone can have access to and understand. Also if Carr believes the learning process is better, this option is always available for people who want to learn according to this scholarly principal. However, for the rest of the population the quick and easy access has allowed the average population to become more educated, and to expose themselves to aspects of academia that previously is reserved for
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer have the capacity to sit down and read a book, as well as his own personal experiences with this issue. The internet presents tons of data at once, and it is Carr’s assumption that our brains will slowly become wired to better receive this information.
According to www.telegraph.co.uk, “[y]oung people aged between 16 and 24 spend more than 27 hours a week on the internet.” Certainly this much internet usage would have an effect on someone. What exactly is the effect of using the internet too much? Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that we are too reliant on the internet and it is making the us dim-witted and shortens our attention span. While Clive Thompson’s article “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” states that technology is not only a collection of knowledge, it also a method of sharing and recording our own knowledge. I fall between both Carr and Thompson. I agree with car on his points of us being too reliant on the internet but disagree when he states that it is making us less intelligent. Meanwhile, I also support Thompson’s statement that the internet allows us to assimilate vast amounts of knowledge but disagree with his opinion on how we should be reliant on
Google is a practical search engine, which provides endless information in a matter of seconds. Google's development occurred in September of 1997 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Mcfadden 2017). It developed into a popular research tool in light of it capacity to perform quickly and accurately. Nicholas Carr argues in his article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?,” the web has evolved to impact the way humans think and process information. “Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology” (Jacobs 2011). He received his masters in literature and language from Harvard University (Jacobs 2011). He claims humans’ physiological procedures are now adapted to a simple and immediate learning technique (3). Carr tries
In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” the reader finds all three methods of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos in emphasizing his point that Google is possibly making people stupid; but it is ultimately the people who cause their own mental deterioration. His persuasion is a reminder to people of the importance of falling back on the “traditional” ways of reading. He also understands that in skimming an article one has the ability to retain what is necessary. Carr himself points out that in the past he was better able to focus on what he read and retain the information. However, now he exercises the process of browsing and skimming over information, just as many individuals have come to do in this day and age.
Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
Often accounts of the past, fragments of a story, and the author’s own interpretations are the result of personal bias. Carr conducted his research with a specific theory in mind, and made selections based off what aligned with his interests. He cites a recently published study of online reading habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. The shcolars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. Apparently, they found that people using the sites exhibited, “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another. He offers that “Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.” (7). He’s implying the opposition, while in fact, if there’s no evidence that they did read it, there’s equally no evidence that they didn’t. Furthermore, after researching the article the actual quotes states, “Academic users have strong consumer instincts and research shows that they will squirrel away content in the form of downloads, especially when there are free offers. In spite of this behavior and the very short session times that we witness, there is no evidence as to the extent to which these
If you find yourself skimming through pages, looking for bullet points and your mind wandering off, you might be suffering the effects of Google making you stupid. These are the things that Nicholas Carr talks about in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” was originally published in July 2008 in Atlantic magazine. Carr argues that the use of technology on the daily basis has made us unable to go into deeper thought about things. Along with the opinion of Scientists and other “literary types” he asserts that the web has indeed made us change the way we think. Power Browsing is the new way people are reading, this is where you look from title to title, surfing the web from link to link. Overall, he advocates that eventually our brains will
In composing “Is Google Making Us More Stupid” Nicholas Carr wants his audience to be feared by the internet while at the same time he wants his work to seem more creditable. Nicholas Carr uses many different types of evidence to show us that we should be scared and feared as well as his credibility. Carr’s audience is people who think like him, who find themselves getting lost on the internet while reading something, someone who is educated and uses the internet to look up the answers to questions or to read an article or book.
Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and Sherry Turkle’s “How Computers Change the Way We Think” both discuss the influence of technology to their own understanding and perspective. The first work by Nicholas Carr is about the impact technology has on his mind. He is skeptical about the effect it could cause in the long term of it. He gives credible facts and studies done to prove his point. While Sherry Turkle’s work gives a broad idea of the impact of technology has caused through the years. She talks about the advances in technology and how it is changing how people communicate, learn and think. In both works “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” the authors present
The following essay will discuss how the ideas in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, is expressed in the futuristic novel Feed, by M.T Anderson.
Nicholas Carrs article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” makes points that I agree with, although I find his sources to be questionable. The article discusses the effects that the Internet may be having on our ability to focus, the difference in knowledge that we now have, and our reliance on the Internet. The points that are made throughout Carrs article are very thought provoking but his sources make them seem invaluable.