Nicholas Carr

In the Article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr suggests that the internet, in this case google, is changing our way of thought and reshaping our intelligence. For he feels that “someone, or something,” has changed his way the matter he thinks. He no longer enjoys reading a book, no matter the size, since he cannot focus as well as he used to. He also goes on to explain that any time he spends online is altering his concentration. Along with that, he notes that the internet has saved him hours of physical research time involved with his works. Since that the internet shows him the needed information than referencing him to it.

The author knows that this technology has become a source to any needed information. You can almost tell that Carr feels that this medium comes with some sort of price. He writes that the media not only supplies the

content, but “also shape the process of thought”. His ability of focusing and processing is being molded by the internet. The author’s mind has changed from naturally reading hard copies of books and works to scanning through online articles as if it was nothing. He describes this by writing, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Skit.”
Though this isn’t a case of a rare-single case-phenomenon, for Carr contacted his buddies; he realizes they are dealing with the same issue. For instance, Scott Karp, an online blogger, stopped reading books all together because of the ordeal.
According to the author, “anecdotes alone don’t prove much.” when it comes down to proving if there is a negative side-effect from the web since extended studies have yet to be done on the subject. Carr found a study that suggests that some evidence to the view. Another five-year study indicates that reading habits reflect the skimming affect was used to go from text to text faster. Also the study found that the ones whom skimmed rarely went back and followed up on the sources.
Carr thinks that the access to the internet and cell phones is leading to us reading more than ever before. Even though it isn’t the same as reading a book, the way thinking behind reading changes into a “new sense of the self”. Carr goes on and quotes Maryanne Wolf on how reading articles define what and how one can be. Also, while reading that our comprehension is not event activated since we are no longer reading for that deep feeling.
The Nicholas Carr supports the idea Maryanne Wolf proposed, that reading “is not an instinctive skill”.

Reading requires people to train their minds to understand the text. Media has also played a key role in shaping actual parts of the brain to understand written language. Studies have demonstrated that readers of different languages developed differently in the “mental circuitry” apart from each other’s language. In the brain, variations can be found all over the cognitive regions responsible for language. Car goes on to explain that one could assume that there will be differences between the use of the Net and reading physical matter.

The author found out that back in the late 1800’s there was a man whom bought a typewriter, Friedrich Nietzsche. Just so happens that the man was losing his sense of sight. He tried so hard to keep writing past headaches and exhaustion. When it all seemed to be failing, the typewriter actually saved the day. Nietzsche learned the keys and was able to prevail with his new telegraphic skill. Nietzsche noted to a friend that “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our

thoughts.”
The author believes that you can always change your brain in some form or way. Also he stated that the brain’s potential was maxed out by the time we become adults. Researchers have determined that this was not the case. One found that cells are able to make new connections and “reprogram itself” at any moment.
Carr suggests that as “we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell” describes as “our ‘intellectual technologies’”, we eventually become those technologies. As an example, the author compares this with a clock. Carr states that a guy named Lewis Mumford told about how the device separated time from our events to a specific standard we know today. That division eventually became the reference point of our minds.
The clock somewhat brought together everything into science, while at the same time threw away something. The article provides that we gave up on listening to our instincts and grew closer to the clock. Eventually this adjustment leads to our lives revolving around this time: eating, sleeping, working, and so forth. All based on clock-work.
Getting used to this new lifestyle changes how we explain ourselves. Carr wrote that our minds begin to process in shift work. Technology terms he mentions that our brain functions like a computer. The brain automatically allows the adaptation to occur to whole body, going deeper than ever before.
The Web’s future has a lot of expectations, especially on long-term effects such as cognition. In 1936, a British mathematician established that the computer can be redesigned to function as any other device. The idea can be observed today; the internet is growing into an enormous computing system. Everything we could ever need has been formed from it.
Yet while one is at home browsing, their influence goes beyond the monitor in front of them. As we grow more used to how things are, the media has grown more favorable to the people watching. Everything moving faster, details being left out, and propaganda all have evolved from the beginning. Now we get the information needed without flipping a single page. Now the new media’s ways are being used by the old.
Communications also play as much influence as the visual media in our life. Carr states that the internet has a large area of control. “The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.”
While Nietzsche was using the typewriter, Frederick Winslow Taylor was focusing on a stopwatch so he can improve efficiency of a steel plant. Taylor took notes and improved the factory’s productivity, yet while the workers all disagreed on the method of breaking down everything into small steps.
Eventually the world picked up with Taylor’s methods. Taylor believed that a big change was going to occur. For the system will eventually reconstruct the lifestyle of the workplace.
Turns out that Taylor’s system would still be used today. It “remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing.” It is being run by the engineers to lead us into the future. Carr notes that the internet is a complex mechanism that is designed to be as profitable as possible. All being run by people who are trying to figure out the best way to carry out “knowledge work”.
The headquarters of Google can be considered the highest level of the internet. It could be called the Church of Taylorism, since it is practiced religiously within. The “priest” says that the foundation of the company is the “science of measurement”. The data collected by Google is used to perform many experiments a day just so it can find a better method of providing information to the people. “What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.” Google’s goal is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful for the public.
Though Carr can only wonder where it can end. Google founders are actually trying to make the “search engine into an artificial intelligence” mechanism. Their goal is full of ambition to figure out the solutions to questions that haven’t been answered. Carr goes on to write that introducing our brains with this A.I. possibly can improve humans. As if our brains could become a high-speed computer alongside of the internet.
Carr is left to wonder of the satisfactions of this newfound idea, or possible future technology.
Carr goes on to write of another early technology that factors in, Gutenberg’s printing press. A humanist thought that having access to literature would lead to the weakening of one’s mind. Others worried about the social and religious impacts of the books. One professor stated that some negative impacts were proven true. Carr also believes that books have a positive influence too.
Nicholas Carr said that “you should be skeptical of my skepticism.” He thinks that some that ones who dismiss these cases could be proven right, yet the internet has already replaced so much we are just now viewing something different. The deep reading hard copies promote thoughts from the value of the mind. He writes that through the readings, the contemplation form our own ideas and thoughts. Readings like so are just alike deep thinking.
Once we lose our sense of quietness, we lost who we are.