To Google or Not To Google?
Google is great. Isn’t it? You forget the name of that actress in that new movie you just saw and BAM! All you have to do is Google it. You don’t even have to think hard about it, because the answer is so close within your reach, just pull out your smart phone or laptop and give it a few seconds to load and there it is. What would have taken you 30 minutes, maybe even an hour to remember was easily found on the Internet with just the touch of a button. I saw Google differently before I read Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making us Stupid”. I went from seeing Google as a tool, to seeing it is a weapon. The beginning of Carr’s essay, jumped out at me immediately and made me think. Carr explains “Over the past
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few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neutral circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going- so far as I can tell- but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.” In Carr’s opinion, this thing that is doing the reprogramming in our minds, is the Internet or more specifically Google. After hearing Carr’s theory you can’t help but wonder where you stand for yourself on this issue. After reading this article, though, I couldn’t agree more with Carr. Google is affecting how and how much we read and chipping away at concentration and contemplation, it is affecting the quality of our research and it is slowly changing and reprogramming our minds. My first point is that Google is affecting how we read and how much we read. I can personally attest to this considering I honestly haven’t read a book in a while. It is partially due to the fact that I find all of my research and articles online so I don’t need to buy or rent any books. And when it comes to reading for “fun”, I will say honestly that even the most entertaining books can barely keep my attention. I find myself going to read a romance novel or fictional novel, but after a few pages, my eyes are skimming but my brain is elsewhere. Carr explains this further in his text, “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthily article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (Carr). Our minds have also begun to take in information in a different way due to the Internet. The net seems to be “chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (Carr). Have you ever felt this way about how you read or how you process information differently like Carr explains? If so, I’m sure you haven’t thought about it being the Internet that is morphing this change. And in so many people’s eyes the Internet should never be considered a bad thing, but hopefully this will make you think twice about your brain and the things that are affecting it. After this article was published there was a great deal of discussion on this topic and controversy too. This toping brought about multiple studies in universities and people started talking about whether this was affecting their reading. And “This prompted Eric Schmidt, the 54-year-old chief executive and chairman of Google to express his concern that young people growing up in the mobile and instant information age might indeed experience problems with deep reading. ‘As the world looks to these instantaneous devices... you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines and so forth,’ he told the World Economic Forum in Davos. ‘That probably has an effect on cognition, probably has an effect on reading’” (As sited from Google, 2010). When it comes to research, the Internet is the most commonly used source.
Before the Internet, research looked very different. Back then; the common way to research was through textbooks or at the library searching through multiple sources before finding one that suited your essay or research paper. Many people praise the Internet considering how much quicker it is and more easily accessible too. Which I suppose that is understandable, but is it really worth changing our minds for? William Badke states in his article “How Stupid Is Google Making Us?” that, “Google is not making us stupid, but it may be making us shallow.” That is an interesting opinion, however, consider the face that the definition of shallow is “of little depth” (Dictionary.com). Even if stupidity wasn’t accurate, how much greater is shallow? Is that how I want my brain defined? Not me. There was a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from university college London. “The scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors of two popular research sites… that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using these sites exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity’; hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would ‘bounce’ out to another site”
(Carr). Carr also states “The web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms or 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…. For me, as for others, the net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. ‘The perfect recall of silicon memory’ Wireds' Clive Thompson has written, ‘can be an enormous boon to thinking’. But that boon comes at a price.” The theory that Google is slowly reprogramming or changing our minds is terrifying indeed, but it is better said than unsaid. Our brains will slowly adapt to the Internet and pretty soon books will not be able to be enjoyed or even completed due to our brains being reprogrammed for the net and one day maybe for the net only. A final quote from this informative article stating James Olds and Daniel Bell's opinions, “James olds says that even the adult mind ‘is very plastic’. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. ‘The brain’ according to Olds, ‘has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions’. As we use what Daniel Bell has called our ‘intellectual technologies’- the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities- we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies” (Carr). Take some time to think about all of this. Do you notice your reading habits have changed or you find yourself not being able to get through a chapter of your book? Has your researching become solely dependent on Google? Did you read this article and think to yourself, “The Internet is reprogramming my brain and I can’t help it.” Well maybe you can help it. Is this something you're passionate about? Do we need deeper research on this topic? Do not be alarmed by these questions, but instead take this time to answer one more question, “What are you going to DO about it?”
Carr’s message is that Google is not actually making people stupid. It is just making people forget the traditional sense of reading. He expresses that this is a cause for the lack of attention today’s world compared to the time when there were no computers, internet, or Google. I disagree with this argument. If an individual has the propensity to skim over information by nature, than that individual will always be searching for means to gather
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.
He states how he used to spend hours reading, but his concentration started to drift after two or three pages. He backed up his theory with stories from others who say they’re experiencing the same thing. But they still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how the internet affects cognition. After a brief history lesson, Carr starts to incorporate Google into the article. He tells us about Google’s history and their mission.
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
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
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
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.
In the articles, “How Facts Backfire” and “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Keohane and Carr explain the cognitive blocks we are faced with in society. Keohane explains how we can be misinformed because of our beliefs. These beliefs can cloud our judgement of what is true and what isn’t true. Carr focuses on how the internet has changed the way we think. Carr includes how the internet can distract us, making tasks harder to complete. Both Keohane and Carr show us the negatives side effects of cognition.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
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
In the passage “ Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, Nicholas emulates the thesis stating that we as race are not capable of doing certain tasks from the past. Because of
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...
Carr, like many people, fear the possibility that Google and the Internet will affect knowledge itself when he reveals that “Maybe I’m just a worrywart” (326). But the Internet as every instrument, it requires to learn how to use it. A process that very likely will last decades and maybe longer, considering how insanely complex the instrument seems. Google and current’s technologies all have “drawing power”. The kind of power that continues to offer readers the ultimate diversity of mass communication. Technology’s needs grow with almost the same pace, human culture and civilization do. We can all agree that a vast number of people prefer to search something in Google rather than reading a book, but the essence remains the same, people
In this day and age,we tend to rely on artificial intelligence such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa to guide us in our daily lives.In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr,this type of technological advancement is coined as “intellectual technology”. According to Carr, intellectual technology is “what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our intellectual technologies—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies”(4).What Carr means is that the internet is the tool we use to find information,to gather ideas to share knowledge, to make precise calculations only that we can expand on what we already know. Taking the definition of intellectual technology into consideration, we can see that as
Google is basically everywhere in our lives, we tend to not notice the fact that we are on our electronics for more than half the day. We are in the information age and electronics are essential in our lives to keep our days going. The article states that Google is affecting our state of minds and making it something less than normal. With technology in the reach of our hands everything changed from what it was, people tend to be lazy now these days and just search up anything, even for the simplest of things that we tend to know already. This activity doesn’t apply all the knowledge that should be known since we think we have all the answers in our hands whenever they are needed. Electronic devices, including the sources we use to find our information, stimulates our brain by learning and getting information in different ways.