Isn't it ironic, all these people living in this technologically sophisticated age, (where information is abundant and services and apps are literally at ones fingertips) have everything they can possibly imagine except privacy, a God-given right? The idea of privacy and its importance has diminished in recent history. We no longer know who is watching, tracking, or stalking us, nor do we seem to care. It has become normal to us and we do not try to avoid it. "Our children are accustomed to electronic surveillance as part of their daily lives" (Turkle 39). People give out their credit card numbers and social security numbers online like candy on Halloween. Computers and the creation and advancement of the internet are not only changing the …show more content…
way our brains process information, as Sherry Turkle concludes in her essay "How Computers Change The Way We Think", but also the way we interact with others in person. We have become obsessed with the convenience and accessibility of information, and we are ready and willing to sacrifice our privacy in order stay connected. It seems coincidental to me that while brainstorming ideas for this essay on internet privacy, I was becoming the victim of internet fraud and exposure myself. One afternoon as I was perusing the web for useless information, battling pop-ups and advertisements, my computer crashed. This was uncommon for me seeing as though my device was relatively new and had never crashed before. I tampered with the settings a bit, fiddled with the programming, and soon enough I was back on the web. I instinctively made a small purchase on Amazon and went on about my day. The next day I checked up on my online bank accounts, as I always do, and to my surprise I was missing $300. I frantically searched my statements to see where the money had gone. Somehow, someone had obtained my credit card information and made a few "small" purchases with my money online. I thought, "How could this be? Who would do such a thing?" I had become a victim of fraud. After what seemed like days on hold with my bank and countless trips to the bank, I was told I would get my money back, (I'm still waiting on my money). How did this happen? I was never concerned about my privacy on the internet, in fact I don’t think it ever even crossed my mind. I would give out my card number and my social security number without thinking twice about it. My confidentiality on the internet just did not seem relevant to me. It seems to be that computers are in fact changing the way we think.
In this fast-paced and hectic life, people have developed a desire for "Instant gratification" which essentially means that people get what they want, and they get it in an instant. Google has proven to be one of our greatest tools in accomplishing this. In Nicholas Carr's essay, "Is Google Making Us Stupid", he explains the convenience of this search engine, "Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after" (Carr 46). Research is a way for people to learn how to learn, but Google is making learning too easy. There is no challenge in trying to find and learn information. Anything you need to know is literally one click away. But is Google making us stupid, or is it making us lazy? "The more pieces of information we can 'access' and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers" (Carr 51). Everything comes fast and easy, and people seem to think this will expand the knowledge we can obtain. We now expect information to find us. We think we can type in whatever need into the Google search bar and we will be provided with links to the knowledge de desire. Google is making us lazy and this has major repercussions. Just as I was too lazy to go to the store to make my purchase or even pay with actual cash. I could not be bothered. Paying online with a card and then having the item delivered is just too convenient, but this convenience caused a breach in my own privacy, and a loss of my own
money. This idea of laziness is evident also in our personal interaction with other people. It has become much easier to form and grow relationships on the internet than it is in person. Facebook has become a hotspot for meeting new people and staying connected with old friends, but the relationships that it helps develops are not relationships at all, but simulations of the real thing. "Scanning my Facebook page gives me, precisely, a 'sense' of connection. Not an actual connection, just a sense" (Deresiewicz 57). Faux relationships has developed out of laziness and convenience, and not only has this begun to ruin our ability to form real, connective, and personal relationships, but it has opened the doors for people to create avatars. An avatar is a representation of one's true self. People use these avatars to portray themselves online and escape from reality, "[Avatars] offer what Erik Erikson described as a moratorium, a time out or a safe space for the personal experimentation that is so crucial for adolescent development" (Turkle 39). Some find solace in avatars because of their ability to help one express themselves. Sometimes though these "avatars" are a false representation of someone. It has become easier and easier to steal the identity of another through the use of sites like Facebook, and this has proven to be a huge problem. The internet has opened so many doors for us to advance our knowledge and explore the world of information like we've never been able to before. We are able to communicate effortlessly with individuals halfway across the world with one click of a mouse. We can make all of our purchases without leaving our home, we no longer have to sit in a library and burry ourselves with useless material searching for one little snippet of info. The internet is a wonderful thing but it has some major flaws. It has changed the way we think. We skim, we expect to gather the intelligence we want with little effort, we are becoming lazy. And with this laziness comes lack of privacy. Others take advantage of this gathering your personal information to benefit themselves. Identity theft, catfishing (pretending to be someone you're not in hopes of finding a mate), and even pedophilia have become more and more customary. It’s a very dangerous world out there on the web, and trust me, it's so easy to become a victim of the web, so next time you click onto Google, be mindful of your searches and remember, someone is always watching!
In my opinion, Google does not make us stupid like Carr suggests in his article. Google may make us seem lazy because we do less reading and physical activity. Information found on websites helps people become smarter and able to learn subjects easier in school. In the end, Carr never really provides scientific evidence that shows the brain’s circuitry having actually changed. I generally agree with Gladstone’s views and think the mirror metaphor is a useful way of talking about the media’s role in a free society. I also think that the computer and the Internet have enhanced our abilities and increased our processing speeds for acquiring knowledge: making the human brain more efficient in multitasking. The young people who are growing up with this new technology will expand it’s future. Gladstone makes the case that media distributors, even ones that seem indestructible, are ultimately subject to the preferences of their audience: us. Citizens should take up the responsibility of learning about and interacting with valuable media sources and reject those that pander to the lowest common
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
“Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell is an essay that describes how technology has changed social movements. “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr is an essay that describes how technology has made people have declining cognitive abilities. Both of these articles are about how people are using technology to accomplish tasks and goals they set to achieve. In my essay I’m going to compare the two essays and see where they excel and where they fail to expand their essay.
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
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
One of the most sacred ideas that we hold dear is our right to privacy. It a simple correlation between being free and doing what we want, legally speaking, in our own homes and lives. Unfortunately, our lives seem to become less...
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
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.
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.
Nowadays people don’t bother sitting down and going through an article or book from page to page, because it’s not a good use of their time as they can get all information faster through the web. By examining the behaviors of computer users, both authors argue that people don’t really care about deep knowledge of what they are learning or reading. People want to know how things work or are connected in an instant. They feel that they don't need to critically think about the information to help get them along in life. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” supports this claim by citing a scientific study from the University College London were the researchers examined the behavior of visitors to a couple popular websites and found that people using the sites displayed skimming activity (41). The users of the sites did not bother taking the time to read the articles, but they instead power browsed, jumping from one site to the other and hardly returning to the websites they had already visited. In addition, the internet has made people accustomed to new reading styles that people don’t fully comprehend or absorb material. They read things for apparent meaning. Carr also says “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”
Steven Pinker and Nicholas Carr share their opposing views on the effects that mass media can have on the brain. In Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” it explores his viewpoints on how increased computer use affects our thought process in a negative manner. Carr critically analyzes that having widespread access to the internet via the internet has done more harm by disabling our ability to think complexly like it is the researching in a library. On the other hand, Pinker expresses how the media improves our brain’s cognitive functions. Pinker expresses that we should embrace the new technological advances and all we need is willpower to not get carried away in the media. Although both authors bring very valid arguments
If only my local library could hold the vast quantity of information that my hand held smart phone does. Carr insinuates that Google (and the internet) is making us stupid. I say they are making us lazy. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr informatively states that with the advancement of technology, Google search engine, and the internet we are become more distracted—with all the different forms of flash media, the amount of hyper-links after hyper-link after hyper-links, and clickable adds-- in turn we are doing less critical reading by way of the internet as opposed to a printed book. Being able to glance over several articles in hour’s verses days looking through books; being able to jump from link to link in order to get the information you need, never looking at the same page twice has decrease out deep thinking and reading skills. Now days, all forms of reading, e.g. newspaper, magazine, etc. are small amount of reading to get the main idea of what’s going on and if you would like more information you will have to go to another page to do so. In the end, C...
The word “privacy” did not grow up with us throughout history, as it was already a cultural concept by our founding fathers. This term was later solidified in the nineteenth century, when the term “privacy” became a legal lexicon as Louis Brandeis (1890), former Supreme Court justice, wrote in a law review article, that, “privacy was the right to be let alone.” As previously mentioned in the introduction, the Supreme Court is the final authority on all issues between Privacy and Security. We started with the concept of our fore fathers that privacy was an agreed upon concept that became written into our legal vernacular. It is being proven that government access to individual information can intimidate the privacy that is at the very center of the association between the government and the population. The moral in...
As technology as advanced, so has our society. We are able to accomplish many tasks much easier, faster, and in effective ways. However, if looked at the harmful impact it has had on the society, one can realize that these are severe and really negative. One of the main concerns is privacy rights. Many people want that their information and personal data be kept in secrecy, however with today’s technology, privacy is almost impossible. No matter how hard one tries, information being leaked through technological advancements have become more and more common. With personal information being leaked, one does not know exactly how the information will be used, which validates the statement that privacy rights have been diminishing and should be brought to concern. Many people do not realize that their information is being used by third-parties and to consumer companies. In conclusion, technology has had a significant effect on privacy
We as human beings enjoy finding the easy way to do things. Instead of looking through hundred of pages in books for information, you can simply type your question into Google and get your answer in seconds. The internet 's search engines may not find the answer to an exact question instantly, but it will provide millions of different websites that will have information on the topic. Some people say that’s making us more lazy, we look at three different websites and if we can’t find it we