Is Google Making USupid? By Nicholas Carr
The Internet Takeover
The piece, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr provides an interesting view from a writer's perspective of his change in processing information due to the growing digital world. He reflects on how the internet has made his life easier but also caused his attention span to shorten. He believes that while the internet is very helpful, it is changing the way people think. Carr relates his struggles to those of many of his intellectual colleagues and how it has changed their lives as fellow consumers of text. He explores the changes within the mind and the way that, in turn, it has changed a person's response to reading. To further his explanations, he uses in depth descriptions of various technologies and their …show more content…
Nearing the end of the piece, Carr concludes that the internet and conventional reading may be two separate entities. Whether it be positive or negative, there is a distinctive difference in comprehension. Referring to traditional text he says, “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” (Carr 580). Diving into a book or lengthy text requires the readers full focus to gain the required information. The way that many have been reading has changed to a far more superficial level. Now, reading is a vessel to gain quick insight, not a fully comprehensive …show more content…
Whether it be the people a person spends time with or a product they use frequently, they become influenced. The technology that surrounds an individual has the potential to change who they are. The human brain, being the highly adaptable organ that it is, is susceptible to this sort unintentional shift. Carr explains, “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.” (Carr 576). This means that in terms of the internet, we are coming into thinking and operating more like it. This way of thinking makes sense why people have adopted ‘text speak’ among other things. Just like the internet, society continues to aim to be efficient, cutting corners to keep things quick. Society becomes what it creates; the digital world parallels the human
The piece, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr provides an interesting view from a writer's perspective of his change in processing information due to the growing digital world. He reflects on how the internet has made his life easier but also caused his attention span to shorten. He believes that while the internet is very helpful, it is changing the way people think. Carr relates his struggles to those of many of his intellectual colleagues and how it has changed their lives as fellow consumers of text. He explores the changes within the mind and the way that, in turn, it has changed a person's response to reading. To further his explanations, he uses in depth descriptions of various technologies and their …show more content…
Nearing the end of the piece, Carr concludes that the internet and conventional reading may be two separate entities. Whether it be positive or negative, there is a distinctive difference in comprehension. Referring to traditional text he says, “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” (Carr 580). Diving into a book or lengthy text requires the readers full focus to gain the required information. The way that many have been reading has changed to a far more superficial level. Now, reading is a vessel to gain quick insight, not a fully comprehensive …show more content…
Whether it be the people a person spends time with or a product they use frequently, they become influenced. The technology that surrounds an individual has the potential to change who they are. The human brain, being the highly adaptable organ that it is, is susceptible to this sort unintentional shift. Carr explains, “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.” (Carr 576). This means that in terms of the internet, we are coming into thinking and operating more like it. This way of thinking makes sense why people have adopted ‘text speak’ among other things. Just like the internet, society continues to aim to be efficient, cutting corners to keep things quick. Society becomes what it creates; the digital world parallels the human