short essay on is google making us stupid

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What the Internet is doing to our brains

“Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural 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. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy 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, 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.

I think I know what’s going on. 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. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. 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. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

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,” Wired ’s Clive Thompson has written , “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media , recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine , also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars 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. They found that people using the 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. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “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 when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

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“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, 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 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. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization , the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford  described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”

The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum  observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation , the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936 , the British mathematician Alan Turing  proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, The New York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor  carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.

More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management , was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.”

Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”

Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review , and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek , Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”

Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it?

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus , Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading , as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay , the playwright Richard Foreman  eloquently described what’s at stake:

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”

I’m haunted by that scene in 2001 . What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001 , people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

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Is Google Making Us Stupid Summary, Purpose and Analysis

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is an article by Nicholas Carr, delving into the impacts of the internet on our cognitive abilities. 

Carr explores how his own mind has changed, noting a decline in his capacity for concentration and deep reading. He attributes this to his extensive online activities, which have reshaped his thinking patterns to align more with the rapid, skimming nature of web browsing.

Full Summary

Carr isn’t alone in his experience. 

He mentions friends and acquaintances, including literary types and bloggers, who share similar struggles with focusing on lengthy texts. The phenomenon isn’t just anecdotal; research backs it up. 

A study from University College London found that online reading often involves skimming rather than in-depth exploration, with people hopping between sources without fully engaging with any of them.

The article dives into the history of reading and its evolution, discussing how technologies like the printing press and now the internet have changed our approach to reading and, by extension, our thinking.

Carr draws on the perspectives of experts like Maryanne Wolf, who argues that the internet promotes a more superficial form of reading, impacting our ability to think deeply and make rich mental connections.

Carr also touches upon historical figures like Nietzsche, who experienced a change in his writing style after starting to use a typewriter. This example illustrates how new technologies can subtly influence our cognitive processes.

The broader implications of this shift are significant. As we increasingly rely on the internet for information, our minds adapt to its rapid, interruptive nature, potentially diminishing our capacity for contemplation and reflection. 

Carr suggests that this change might lead to a broader societal impact, where deep, critical thinking becomes less common, and we become more like “pancake people” – spread wide and thin in our knowledge and understanding.

In conclusion, Carr’s article raises important questions about the cognitive effects of the internet. 

While acknowledging the immense benefits of easy access to information, he urges us to consider what might be lost in this trade-off – the depth and richness of thought that comes from deep, uninterrupted reading and contemplation.

The purpose of the article is multifaceted and centers around exploring the impact of the Internet, particularly search engines like Google, on our cognitive processes, particularly our ability to concentrate, comprehend, and engage in deep thinking. 

The article serves several key functions, some of them being –

1. Raising Awareness about Cognitive Changes

Carr aims to draw attention to a subtle but profound shift in how our minds function due to prolonged exposure to the Internet. He shares personal experiences and observations to illustrate how our ability to concentrate and immerse ourselves in deep reading is diminishing. 

By doing so, he encourages readers to reflect on their cognitive experiences and recognize similar patterns in their behavior.

2. Stimulating Intellectual Discourse

The article is a springboard for broader discussion about the nature of intelligence, reading, and learning in the digital age. 

Carr doesn’t just present a personal dilemma but taps into a larger cultural and intellectual concern, inviting readers, educators, and scholars to ponder the implications of our growing dependency on digital technology for information processing.

3. Reviewing and Interpreting Research and Theories

Carr integrates research findings and theories from various fields, including neuroscience, psychology , and media studies, to provide a scientific basis for his arguments. 

He references studies and experts to suggest that the Internet’s structure and use patterns significantly influence our neural pathways, affecting our memory, attention spans, and even the depth of our thinking.

4. Historical Contextualization

The article places the current technological shift in a historical context, comparing the Internet’s impact on our cognitive abilities to that of previous technologies, such as the clock and the printing press. 

Carr uses historical analogies to show that while new technologies often bring significant benefits, they can also have unintended consequences for how we think and process information.

5. Provoking a Reevaluation of Our Relationship with Technology

Carr’s article serves as a call to critically assess our relationship with digital technology. He encourages readers to consider how their interactions with the Internet might be shaping their mental habits and to ponder if this influence is entirely beneficial.

6. Ethical and Philosophical Implications

The article also delves into the ethical and philosophical implications of allowing technology to mediate our understanding of the world. 

Carr reflects on the potential loss of certain cognitive abilities and the broader impact this could have on culture, creativity, and the human experience.

7. Encouraging Mindful Engagement with Technology

Ultimately, Carr’s article is a plea for mindful and balanced engagement with technology. 

While recognizing the immense benefits of the Internet, he advocates for a more conscious approach to how we use digital tools, suggesting that we should strive to preserve and cultivate our capacity for deep thought and contemplation.

Themes 

1. the transformation of reading habits and cognitive processes.

At the heart of Nicholas Carr’s exploration is the profound transformation in how we read and process information in the digital age. 

Carr delves into the subtle yet significant shift from deep, immersive reading of printed materials to the skimming and scanning habits fostered by the internet. This theme is not just a commentary on changing reading habits but a deeper inquiry into the cognitive consequences of such a shift. 

He reflects on his own experiences, noting a decreased ability to engage in prolonged, focused reading, which once came naturally. 

This change is attributed to the constant, rapid-fire consumption of information online, leading to a fragmented attention span. 

Carr’s discussion extends beyond personal anecdotes, incorporating research findings that support the notion of diminishing depth in our reading and thinking patterns due to the internet’s influence.

2. The Impact of Technology on Mental Processes and Creativity

Another significant theme in Carr’s article is the broader impact of technology, specifically the internet, on our mental processes and creativity. 

He raises concerns about the internet’s role in reshaping our thinking patterns, aligning them more with its non-linear, hyperlinked structure. This restructuring of thought processes is not just about how we seek and absorb information; it reaches into the realms of creativity and problem-solving. 

Carr invokes historical parallels, drawing on Nietzsche’s experience with the typewriter to illustrate how new technologies can subtly but fundamentally alter our cognitive styles. 

This theme is further enriched by references to various studies and experts, like Patricia Greenfield, who suggest that while certain cognitive abilities, like visual-spatial skills, are enhanced by digital media, this comes at the expense of more traditional, deeper cognitive skills such as reflective thought, critical thinking, and sustained attention.

3. The Dichotomy between Efficiency and Depth in the Digital Era

Carr navigates the complex dichotomy between the efficiency provided by the internet and the potential loss of depth in our thinking. This theme is woven throughout the article, contrasting the immediate, vast access to information against the possible erosion of our capacity for deep contemplation and critical analysis. 

Carr posits that while the internet acts as a powerful tool for quick information retrieval and processing, this rapid and efficient access might be undermining our ability to engage in more profound, contemplative thought processes. 

He questions whether the trade-off between the speed of information access and the richness of our intellectual life is worth it, suggesting that the convenience of the internet could be leading us to a more superficial understanding of the world around us. 

This theme is crucial as it encapsulates the broader societal implications of our growing dependency on digital technologies, prompting a reflection on what we gain and what we might be inadvertently sacrificing in the digital age.

Arguments and Evidence

• Personal Anecdotes : Carr begins with a personal anecdote, a rhetorical strategy that makes his argument relatable. He confesses his own struggles with concentration and deep reading, which he attributes to his internet usage.
• Historical References : He cites historical instances (like Nietzsche’s use of a typewriter) to illustrate how new technologies can subtly influence thinking and writing styles.
• Scientific Research : Carr references various studies and experts (like Maryanne Wolf and Bruce Friedman) to support his claims about the internet’s impact on our cognitive functions.
• Philosophical and Cultural Reflections : He integrates philosophical and cultural perspectives, discussing how different technologies have historically influenced human thought and culture.
• Introduction : Carr opens with a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” as a metaphor for his argument. This draws the reader in with a familiar cultural reference.
• Development of Argument : The article unfolds systematically, beginning with personal observations, then moving to broader social implications and scientific evidence.
• Conclusion : Carr concludes by reflecting on the implications of these changes, leaving the reader with questions about the role of technology in our lives.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Engaging Narrative : Carr’s use of personal and historical anecdotes makes the article engaging and relatable.
• Interdisciplinary Approach : He incorporates insights from neuroscience, psychology, history, and culture, providing a well-rounded argument.
• Provocative and Thought-Provoking : The article successfully provokes deeper thought about our relationship with technology.
• Subjectivity : The heavy reliance on personal anecdotes may lead to questions about the universality of his experiences.
• Potential for Technological Determinism : Some might argue that Carr leans towards a deterministic view of technology, underestimating human agency in adapting to and shaping technological uses.

Overall Impact

Carr’s article is a significant contribution to the discourse on the internet’s impact on human cognition. 

It challenges readers to critically assess their interactions with digital technology and consider the broader implications for society and culture. 

While it raises more questions than it answers, it serves as a catalyst for further exploration and discussion on the role of technology in shaping our minds and lives.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Summary

Summary & analysis of is google making us stupid by nicholas carr.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?  was written by Nicholas Carr and published in  The Atlantic  in 2008. The article discusses the author’s personal experience and observations regarding how his reading and thinking patterns have changed due to his increased use of the internet, particularly search engines like Google. The article investigates the impact of internet use on cognition, concentrating on changes in reading habits and information processing. It raises concerns about the internet’s possible influence on deep reading and critical thinking skills.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Summary

The author raises concerns about the  potential impact of internet usage on deep reading, interpretation of the text, and the formation of rich mental connections . He talks about how the human brain is malleable and how different intellectual devices, such as the internet, may influence our thinking processes. The article even draws parallels to historical examples, such as the advent of the mechanical clock, which influenced the conception of time and the way people thought.

The author begins by referencing a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” where the supercomputer HAL pleads with astronaut Dave Bowman to stop disconnecting its memory circuits, expressing a sense of loss and deterioration. The author then  draws a parallel to his own experience , feeling that his mind is being changed by someone or something. He describes a shift in his thinking and difficulty with concentration, particularly when reading. He attributes this change to the extensive time spent online, where he searches, surfs, and gathers information from the Internet.

The author acknowledges the Internet’s benefits, such as quick access to large amounts of information, but also contends that it has a cost. He argues that the Internet is shaping the way he thinks and diminishing his capacity for concentration and contemplation. He describes a  shift from deep reading to a more superficial style of reading  that mirrors the rapid flow of information online. Many friends and acquaintances report similar experiences, struggling to stay focused on long pieces of writing.

The author  cites Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist , who argues that reading is not an innate skill but something we learn and practice. Different technologies used for reading, such as alphabets and ideograms, shape our brain’s neural circuits differently. The author suggests that the circuits formed by Internet use will differ from those formed by reading books. They express concern that the Net’s emphasis on efficiency and immediacy may weaken our ability to deeply interpret and connect with the text. The author presents  Friedrich Nietzsche’s adoption of a typewriter  as an example of how a technological tool influenced his writing style. He argues that intellectual technologies shape our thinking and cognition. The clock, for instance, detached time from human events and created a different sense of reality. Similarly, the Internet is subsuming other intellectual technologies and transforming them into its image, scattering attention and diffusing concentration. Traditional media adapt to the Internet’s influence to meet the audience’s changing expectations.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Analysis

The author cites a study on online research habits that indicates a shift in reading habits characterized by rapid reading and quick browsing. He contends that the Internet’s emphasis on rapid data availability favors this practice, resulting in a  loss of deep reading and comprehension . The author discusses the idea that intellectual technologies, such as the Internet, shape our thinking and cognition. He refers to the use of a typewriter by Friedrich Nietzsche as an example of how a technical item altered his writing style. This shows that the Internet has an impact on cognitive processes other than reading habits.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Context 

To accurately describe the social, historical, and cultural context in which this article was likely written, we can consider some general factors and trends that were prevalent during the period leading up to 2021 when the knowledge cutoff of the model is set.

The reference to Friedrich Nietzsche adopting a typewriter serves to illustrate how historical figures have been influenced by intellectual technologies. It implies that the issues presented in the essay are not novel, but rather part of a  larger historical debate  on the link between technology and cognition.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Title  

Overall, the title and subtitle are important because they draw the reader’s attention, provide a problem that is relevant and concerning, and set the tone for an investigation into the impact of the internet on our thinking and brain functioning.

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Nicholas Carr's blog

“is google making us stupid”: sources and notes.

Since the publication of my essay Is Google Making Us Stupid? in The Atlantic, I’ve received several requests for pointers to sources and related readings. I’ve tried to round them up below.

The essay builds on my book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, particularly the final chapter, “iGod.” The essential theme of both the essay and the book – that our technologies change us, often in ways we can neither anticipate nor control – is one that was frequently, and deeply, discussed during the last century, in books and articles by such thinkers as Lewis Mumford, Eric A. Havelock, J. Z. Young, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter J. Ong.

The screenplay for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke’s book 2001 , a lesser work than the film, was based on the screenplay rather than vice versa.

Scott Karp’s blog post about how he’s lost his capacity to read books can be found here , and Bruce Friedman’s post can be found here . Both Karp and Friedman believe that what they’ve gained from the Internet outweighs what they’ve lost. An overview of the University of College London study of the behavior of online researchers, “Information Behaviour of

the Researcher of the Future,” is here . Maryanne Wolf’s fascinating Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain was published last year by Harpercollins.

I found the story of Friedrich Nietzsche’s typewriter in J. C. Nyíri’s essay Thinking with a Word Processor as well as Friedrich A. Kittler’s winningly idiosyncratic Gramophone, Film, Typewriter and Darren Wershler-Henry’s history of the typewriter, The Iron Whim .

Lewis Mumford discusses the impact of the mechanical clock in his 1934 Technics and Civilization . See also Mumford’s later two-volume study The Myth of the Machine . Joseph Weizenbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason remains one of the most thoughtful books written about the human implications of computing. Weizenbaum died earlier this year, and I wrote a brief appreciation of him here .

Alan Turing’s 1936 paper on the universal computer was titled On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem . Tom Bodkin’s explanation of the New York Times ‘s design changes came in this Slate interview with Jack Shafer.

For Frederick Winslow Taylor’s story, I drew on Robert Kanigel’s biography The One Best Way and Taylor’s own The Principles of Scientific Management .

Eric Schmidt made his comments about Google’s Taylorist goals during the company’s 2006 press day . The Harvard Business Review article on Google, “Reverse Engineering Google’s Innovation Machine,” appeared in the April 2008 issue. Google describes its “mission” here and here . A much lengthier recital of Sergey Brin’s and Larry Page’s comments on Google’s search engine as a form of artificial intelligence, along with sources, can be found at the start of the “iGod” chapter in The Big Switch . Schmidt made his comment about “using technology to solve problems that have never been solved before” at the company’s 2006 analyst day .

I used Neil Postman’s translation of the excerpt from Plato’s Phaedrus, which can be found at the start of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology . Walter J. Ong quotes Hieronimo Squarciafico in Orality and Literacy . Clay Shirky’s observation about the printing press was made here .

Richard Foreman’s “pancake people” essay was originally distributed to members of the audience for Foreman’s play The Gods Are Pounding My Head . It was reprinted in Edge. I first noted the essay in my 2005 blog post Beyond Google and Evil .

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Rhetoric in “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Carr Essay

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Summary of the Essay

Carr’s manipulation of words, carr’s use of the ethos, carr’s use of the pathos, carr’s use of the logos, works cited.

Nicholas Carr’s powerful essay called “Is Google Making Us Stupid” is an interesting piece of writing that persuaded readers to take a long and hard look on the Internet’s impact on the human brain. An overview of the essay revealed the application of a careful appeal to the reader’s emotions, the establishment of the writer’s credibility, logical presentation of relevant information, and the subtle entreaty using shared experiences. After a careful review of the ancient rules of persuasion, it was made clear that Carr utilized an Aristotelian construct characterized by three Latin words – pathos, ethos, and logos – in order to develop a persuasive argument concerning the impact of the Internet on the human brain.

Nicholas Carr made an attempt to persuade readers to reconsider the impact of the Internet on a person’s thought process. His claim was centered on a personal experience in conjunction with the experience of other skilled writers when it came to the way they go through certain mental tasks. This was manifested while in the process of reading books, and the creation of significant literary works that required deep thought and several hours of study.

Carr pointed out the speed and ease of access to information as twin factors that affected the radical changes in the Internet user’s thought process. Carr connected with his readers when he leveraged Marshall McLuhan’s theory on how the medium affects the message (1). He also bolstered his claim when he presented the scientific basis of the brain’s plasticity or the mind’s profound adaptation capabilities (Carr 1).

Aristotle’s strategy of persuasion requires three key elements, and it is defined through the usage and interaction of three Latin words: ethos, pathos, and logos (Killingsworth 26). Ethos, the ancient root word for ethics , defines the importance of the speaker’s character. In other words, the proponent of the persuasive rhetoric must have a clear understanding of the importance of credibility because it is a crucial consideration before speaking in front of an audience (Killingsworth 26).

Pathos, another ancient term, defines the need to connect through shared experiences and human emotions (Killingsworth 26). On the other hand, logos, the third component, defines the importance of the logical presentation of verifiable statements, in order to urge the audience to think hard regarding a certain issue (Killingsworth 26).

Aristotle designed the use of the ethos, pathos, and logos as part of an orator’s arsenal of skills (Killingsworth 26). Therefore, adopting the said strategy in the crafting of an essay required the careful manipulation of words. For example, the author substituted Google for the word Internet.

In the ancient use of ethos, orators relied on costumes and hand gestures to establish an air of credibility. This type of methodology was not accessible to Carr. Thus, he utilized a different tactic to establish his credibility, and he succeeded by convincing his readers regarding his writing capabilities. Carr’s ability to create an essay as a professional writer was made obvious after his name was appended to a world-class organization called The Atlantic . However, for those who did not get the hint, Carr added one anecdote after another, and these were subtle references to his capability as a writer. At one point, he intimated that he spent ten years “searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great database of the Internet” (Carr 1). He also made the disclosure that he was familiar with the different forms of online content, such as e-mail, blog posts, video, podcasts, and essays found on websites (Carr 1).

A human connection with the readers was made in the essay’s first paragraph. In the introduction section, the author recalled a poignant scene in one of the most popular films of all time. In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , Carr found the perfect vehicle to carry the message regarding the abstract idea of the re-arrangement of the mental circuitry within the brain (Carr 1). It was a well-calculated move on the part of the author, because the film’s popularity and subject matter assured the establishment of common ground between the author and his target audience (Killingsworth 26).

He also created a human connection when he used Google as a reference point, even when the technical term for the medium he wanted to focus on was the Internet, and not the world’s most popular search engine. However, he came to realize the fact that when he wrote the word Google, the majority of the readers associated the term to the World Wide Web or the Internet.

Carr developed a four-stage process in the construction of a logical framework supporting his thesis. First, he examined his personal thought process in relation to the way he acquired information. Second, he examined the thought process of his colleagues. He compared how they acquired information before the advent of the Internet, and after they became adept at getting information online. Third, he discussed a popular theoretical framework regarding the impact of mass media on the lives of modern people.

Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” was a theoretical construct he used. It was useful in understanding how the Internet had affected the way users processed and appreciated the various types of online content available through the World Wide Web. Finally, Carr presented relevant findings in the field of neuroscience that were instrumental in explaining the mental adaptation process that the brain has to go through, when faced with a radically different stimulator or source of information.

Carr’s persuasive argument with regards to the Internet’s effect on the human thought process compelled readers to reconsider how they use the World Wide Web in accessing information online. He persuaded his readers through persuasive arguments based on an ancient framework defined by three Latin words – ethos, pathos, and logos. Carr’s effective application of the concept of “ethos” gave him an opportunity to present his argument in a credible manner. He was able to accomplish this task by presenting his credentials as a writer. Carr’s effective use of “pathos” enabled him to establish a human connection with his readers. As a result, his readers felt they were able to relate to his ideas.

Finally, his careful application of the “logos” principle enabled him to skillfully create a four-stage process of arguing the case. He started with his personal experience that served as a way to connect with his readers. This approach also enhanced his credibility with his readers. As a result, readers were made aware of the mind-altering power of the Internet. Carr’s insights came at a critical juncture when human beings are no longer interested in books. It is important to take a closer look at the ideas provided by Carr because human being must find out if the long-term impact of using the Internet causes detrimental effects that the global population may soon regret.

Carr, Nicholas. “ Is Google Making Us Stupid? ” The Atlantic . 2008. Web.

Killingsworth, Jimmie. Appeals in Modern Rhetoric . SI University Press, 2005.

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IvyPanda. (2020, August 20). Rhetoric in “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Carr. https://ivypanda.com/essays/rhetoric-in-is-google-making-us-stupid-by-carr/

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Is Google Making Us Stupid Essay | Long and Short Essay on Google Making Us Stupid

September 30, 2021 by Prasanna

Is Google Making Us Stupid Essay: Nicholas Carr the scholar wrote a story for the Atlantic Monthly magazine 2008 entitled “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Carr’s argument was based on his own behavior. He usually found himself browsing content online, rather than reading it carefully.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long Essay on Is Google Making Us Stupid

This statement is not necessarily true. Today technology is able to give a person unbounded access to any type of information. Google has made availability of information so handy that a person can gain any type of information he needs within no time. He can explore any topic of his interest easily. It’s google that helps people gain knowledge at a much faster pace and create less stupidity on specific topics. It also proved to be super helpful in communication.

I don’t think that gaining information can ever make anyone stupider. Google is just a source of information while I guess its upto us what we take good or bad I guess that smart people will use the Internet for smart things and stupid people will make stupid use. On the whole, having easy access to more information will make us much smarter than before.,

Yes we do agree that today we depend more on Google for any type of information than ever before – but we can do more than ever before with fewer resources. Collectively, we can say that Google has made us smarter, more capable and more productive.

According to some experts, immediate access to information will make the students dumber. On the contrary search engines are in fact helping students work smarter and faster, but not stupid. All thanks to Google. Students can complete their assignments, projects and school work within a short period of time as they can google any information faster which will help them to utilize the time for other studies. Also Google had made information easily accessible and affordable. There is no need to buy expensive textbooks and encyclopedias. One more advantage of searching online gives a student the opportunity to compare with multiple sources and points of view.

In a 2008 article for The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr argues over the topic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He also argued that not only the Google but the internet as a whole is making us stupid. But according to me google has more advantages than disadvantages.

The survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center in response to author Nicholas Carr’s 2008 Atlantic Monthly cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

But according to an overwhelming majority of 895 experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center Google is making us smarter.

75% experts said use of the Internet has brought many positive changes like it has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge.

Thanks to Google, and other smart search engines that provide us with required information whenever required.

Short Essay on Is Google Making Us Stupid

If any question arises in your mind you have to look for an answer in some books or call someone who you think will have the answer. Then also if you’re unable to get the answer you will feel restless. Then why not here in this case Google will prove beneficial? Google will answer your question at fingertips from different resources. So Is Google Making Us Stupid? No, Google is always available and will give instant answers. Google provides an infinite amount of knowledge at our fingertips.

According to Nicholas Carr article in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” People are habitual to surf any type of information online, so they are losing the ability to concentrate and study the subject deeply. According to him google is making us stupid.

In his article, Carr first addresses how the Internet is changing people’s ability to think. While technology is helpful to people because of boundless information, it is still changing the person’s ability to learn things. Carr claims that the Internet is making people lazy and making them slower at reading and writing. Also humans, dependence on computers is taking away the power of the human brain to think properly.

But now, a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that most Internet and technology experts disagree with Carr’s belief. In turn, the Internet is making us smarter overall. Although it is changing some of the definitions of human intelligence.

The Internet gives a person unbounded access to information.The internet is believed to help people gain knowledge from anywhere at a faster speed. It is also super helpful in communication. So how can google make us stupid.

FAQ’s on Is Google Making Us Stupid Essay

Question 1. What are the advantages of Google?

Answer: Google provides better and easier search results.

• A search engine Google saves your time required to search for information manually and also searches at high speed. Without a search engine like google, you will have to go through different sources to get the required information.
• You can perform many searches within minutes, from different resources.
• Google is free to the user, with no restrictions on the information they are looking for, the time they spend on the site, or the number of searches they perform.

Question 2. How Google proved to be useful to students?

Answer: Google proved very beneficial to the students group. Especially during the period of lock down students were able to get answers to all their queries easily. Google provides textual notes, books, tutorials, inspirational videos and everything that is useful for the students. Students have many queries in their minds and google is there to solve all their queries.

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Google — Critical Response on “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr

Critical Response on "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr

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Words: 876 |

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 876 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic, 301(1), 56-63.
• Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.
• Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: The natural history of innovation. Riverhead Books.
• Katz, J. E., & Rice, R. E. (2002). Social consequences of internet use: Access, involvement, and interaction. MIT Press.
• Lenhart, A., Madden, M., & Hitlin, P. (2005). Teens and technology: Youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation. Pew Internet & American Life Project.
• Pew Research Center. (2022). Internet/broadband fact sheet. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/
• Rheingold, H. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press.
• Rosen, L. D. (2010). Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the way they learn. Macmillan.
• Tapscott, D. (2008). Grown up digital: How the net generation is changing your world. McGraw-Hill.
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.

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49 Is Google Making Us Stupid Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on is google making us stupid, 🎓 most interesting is google making us stupid research titles, 💡 simple is google making us stupid essay ideas.

• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr: Summary
• Critical Thinking in the “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr
• The “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Article by Nicholas Carr
• The Article ​”Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr
• Analysis: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Carr
• Is Google Making Us Stupid?
• Response to Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Carr Critique
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr
• An Overview of Nicholas Carr’s Argument in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Internet and Human Cognition: Analyzing Carr’s Claims
• Carr’s Critique of Digital Media: How Technology Affects Deep Reading
• The Role of Google in Shaping Modern Information Consumption
• The Neuroscience Behind Carr’s Argument: How the Brain Adapts to Technology
• Carr’s Comparison of Print Media and Digital Media
• Supporting and Critiquing Carr’s View about the Influence of the Internet on Attention Span
• Carr’s Argument in the Context of Historical Technological Advances
• The Role of Skimming and Scanning in Online Reading in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Carr’s Use of Historical Analogies: From the Printing Press to the Internet
• The Impact of Search Engines on Human Memory in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Nicholas Carr’s Concerns about the Future of Deep Thinking
• The Response to Carr’s Article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: Supporters and Critics
• The Evolution of Carr’s Argument: From Article to Book (“The Shallows”)
• The Impact of Social Media on the Issues Raised by Carr
• Evaluating Carr’s Argument with Current Research in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• The Ethical Implications in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr’s Argument
• Nicholas Carr’s Argument and the Concept of Cognitive Overload
• The Influence of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” on the Debate about Technology and Education
• Hyperlinks in Online Reading: Carr’s Perspective vs. Modern Usage
• The Decline of Book Reading: Analyzing Carr’s Concerns in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Carr’s View on the Future of Human Intelligence in the Digital Age
• Nicholas Carr’s Article on the Technology and Media Industries: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Algorithms in Shaping What We Read and Know: Nicholas Carr’s Perspective
• Impact of the Internet on Writing and Communication Skills Through “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• Distraction in Carr’s Argument: How the Internet Divides Attention
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: Carr’s Critique of the Information Age
• Results of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” on Public Perception of Technology
• Personal Experience in Carr’s Article: Subjective vs. Objective Analysis
• Information Abundance and Knowledge Scarcity in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Article
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: The Future of Libraries and Physical Books
• AI in the Issues Raised in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Carr
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: The Impact of the Internet on Cultural Literacy
• Nicholas Carr’s Article in the Context of the Digital Divide
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Shows the Psychological Impact of the Internet on Users
• The Legacy of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: Debates Since 2008
• The Effect of Internet Use on Academic Research and Scholarship: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
• The Role of Personalization in Google’s Search Results
• Nicholas Carr’s Argument in the Context of Digital Literacy
• Carr’s Analysis of the Internet’s Impact on Social Interaction

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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

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“I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy 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, 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 opens his essay with a personal anecdote regarding the shift in his manner of thinking and the quality of his intellectual engagement with texts. He contrasts his newly-truncated attention span against the way he used to process texts at a more leisurely pace and with greater subtlety. Carr’s choice to begin with a personal anecdote rather than hard-hitting data makes his essay more immediately relatable. It invites readers to examine their own intellectual life for similarities with Carr’s—and Carr banks on the proliferation and relatability of experiences like his to hook his reader. If he ingratiates himself to the reader with a point of shared experience, he can more effectively mount his argument.

“As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Related Titles

By Nicholas Carr

The Shallows

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