Carr shares the story of two bloggers that are also having problems reading and focusing and feel the internet is responsible. Carr admits that while a recent study at University College London suggests there may be some evidence that the internet is negatively effecting the brain, no long-term studies have been done. With the amount of texting on cell phones and text on the Internet we may be reading more now than when television was the main means of media. Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist, believes that the ability for deep reading that was nurtured by the printing press is being weakened by the way the web puts emphasis on ease and speed of information. Online reading has created “mere decoders of information”, leaving a detachment in the interpretation of text.…
Nowadays, if a young adult hears about a new terminology, instead of going to a library and looking it up in an encyclopedia like what his or her parents would do when they were young, he or she will pull out his or her smartphone and “google” it. Thanks to Google and all other information technology providers, the information and knowledge in this world are closer to the netizens than any other time in the history. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, more than acknowledging the great opportunities which Google has brought to him, Carr brings up his own concern that “the Net …is chipping away [his] capacity for concentration and contemplation.” He also points out the Net is reprogramming people’s brain circuits to change…
you need to find something quickly. However, Nicholas Carr, author of "Is Google Making Us…
Is Google, with all of its information at the tip of our fingers actually making us dumber than we are? On July 1st 2008 an article was written by Nicholas Carr titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and this article was taken differently by many people. He talks about how he has problems reading ever since he discovered Google. Carr states “my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do” (2) and he blames Google is the problem. He believes the constant multi-tasking and skimming over articles on the internet has hindered the way we read. Steven Johnson however will somewhat disagree with the article and writes his own article title “Yes, People Still Read, But Now Its Social.” Mr.…
In Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr argues that people are more interested in instant gratification when they take in information than they are in critically thinking about it. He states that people adapt very quickly to new technologies and incorporate aspects of said technologies into their perception of the world, so inventions such as the computer, which are developed for the purpose of fast rapid information transfer, influence the rate at which people evaluate information. It is more common to see people unable to concentrate on activities such as reading today than it was ten years ago. People are more used to scrolling through web pages and skimming articles than assessing the information they come across. Although this method of accessing information allows people to research more efficiently, people are also more likely to acquiesce to whatever mindset…
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr expresses his concerns on how the Internet is changing the way his mind works and how it’s affecting him in a negative way. Carr suggests that the Internet offers us the benefit of quick and easy knowledge. However, he goes into details about how we merely rely on Google that makes us process information differently from the past and how it’s degrading our critical-thinking skill. Moreover, he touches upon his own experience how accessible the Internet is with hyperlinks and flashy ads that can divert his attention from reading. With this, he noticed that his capacity on concentration for reading has been taken away. Carr proved that others have experienced the same thing that he did…
Search engines such as google are making our society’s IQ go down faster every year. An everyday human being relies on google to help them find simple answers that most people should already know. Nicholas Carr makes various points on how google or other programs are making people stupid. Carrs essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” shows us how search engines are in fact making us dumb.…
The internet has become an effortless way to acquire new information and answer questions that one may ponder. In “Experts Say Google Does Not Make Us Stupid” by David Weir, Weir suggests that the internet has allowed humans to accommodate to the modern lifestyle and break away from traditional methods of obtaining information. Weir is proposing that the internet has provided a way to more efficiently meet the demands…
In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in The Atlantic Magazine, Nicholas Carr begins by talking of a national issue. Our concentration levels are diminishing. Carr uses the title to point out google as the perpetrator, but he refers to the web as a whole. He used to be able to read for hours. However, he struggles with reading a few pages now. Carr says that our brains are being programmed to learn the answer and shut down. You no longer submerge yourself into knowledge. You simply skim the surface of it. Two of the author’s friends are going through the same thing. A pathologist from the University of Michigan no longer reads anything longer than three of four paragraphs. He simply glances over it. The other friend, Scott…
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr illustrates to me that the internet is slowing down the development of our brain. I agree with his argument that technology has affected out attention span, he sets an example of how we now cannot concentrate on the readings, Scott Karp, and Bruce Friedman, both agree that their ability to read long articles has been affected by the web. Also, I agree with Carr that we are becoming low thinking people because the internet gives us easy access to have quick information research. However, I think that Google and the internet are actually helping us to learn new information. It is because when the computers are not here, we do all things by hand. If you want to know what a word means, you would need to get a dictionary. If you want to look up something that your teacher mentioned in class, but you don't know what it is, or how does it look like. Then, you would have to find the encyclopedia to look for it. In nowadays, we do everything by computer, communicate with people, blogging, searching, watch videos, etc. We can learn new information quickly by searching from the internet. As Carr said, "It [the Net] 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" (Carr 62). They take away our concentration, when we are reading an article there are lots of ads, hyperlinks, which would take our attentions. Thus, we will go to another website and look for other stuffs.…
They blame the application for affecting their mind. According to them, search engines like Google are to blame for the newly acquired short attention people experience while reading as they cannot read long passages with complete attention like before. Such inattentiveness prevents readers from reading books and articles or reflecting on the information provided. For example, the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr blames Google for the changes in mental and comprehension abilities of most people. Carr describes his challenge of reading books like before and writes “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet Ski” (Carr, 2008). He argues that the internet inhibits his…
Is Google making us stupid(and smarter)? According to articles a and c, it states that Google is making us smarter. On the other hand, article b and d state that Google is making us stupid. First, we will look at Nicholas Carr perspective on the question, next we will so Peter Norvig statement before finally my perspective on the subject.…
Since the development of Google, there has been a vast amount of information available on various topics or subjects. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” explains and examines the different ways that the internet has been more useful and beneficial, according to the words of the author, Nicholas Carr. According to the readings, the author represents and expresses his thoughts and ideas using logos. Take for instance when Carr expresses that he once was a scuba diver in a sea of words, but now he zips along like a guy on a jet ski (Carr p. 534). Carr expresses that he once was a person who hardly used the internet but now he is one who uses it on a regular basis, making feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain, making it change. No longer does he enjoy reading a book of any length because he cannot sustain concentration on the book. Carr feels that all the time he now spends online is affecting his abilities to concentrate and recognizes that the Internet has been a useful tool for him to search for information and communicate. Carr notes that, unlike footnotes, links send you to the information rather than just refer to it.…
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr discusses over the question about the cause and effect of how Internet impact on our thinking, reading, writing habits and how our brains react to adapt to the “new-media rule”. The author uses many specific examples and statistics to demonstrate his point of view.…
Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Online article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”. Since starting to use the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr said before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his “mind to get caught up in the narrative or the arguments”(July/August 2008, Atlantic Monthly). Today Carr has found that “his concentration drifts away from the text after several pages and he struggles to get back into the text”. His premise is that since he has spent the past ten years working online, searching and surfing and writing content for databases” his brain circuitry has changed. He indicates that some of his fellow writers have experienced the same kinds of changes in their reading books and maintaining concentration. Some of them said they do not read books as easily because their concentration and focus has become shorter.…