Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making USupid'

Is Google Making Us Stupid

In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he argues views other people might not have thought of. He claims that the internet has affected how people process information. He begins to explain this point using a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL, a supercomputer, is being disassembled by the man the machine almost killed. Carr emphasizes the fact that the computer could feel it’s’ brain being taken away as the man stripped its memory circuits.

He explains how his mind has become much more unreliable since his use of the internet. “I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do,” he says (p.731). The amount of access to information that people have and consumption of it, even greater. He supports this by mentioning how “…hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.” (p.732)

Carr then assesses a scientific study from the University College London that is in comparable with his assessment. The researchers studied and observed the behavior of visitors to a couple popular sites. They

Is Google making us stupid? Carr’s conclusion to his article, gives us the an obviously answer. Google gives us a large amount of access to many types of information and that that access thus making us smarter. Carrs main issues was not being able to focus on reading. His first few paragraphs examine the causes behind it and how he’s not the only one with this problem. His friends and colleagues also struggle with this and so do some impressively credentialed bloggers. Carr realizes that that’s not enough to really prove anything. He begins to cite a few studies of internet behavior, giving them as evidence that there is something to the idea that internet use might be changing the way we think and leaving the audience to come to the logical conclusion that he may have a