Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr is a first gerenration,well informed author who writes about how the internet is impacting our minds and lives.Since 2003 Carr has been writing critically about the consequences due to this vast creation, that is the internet. He has written several books and articles including “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” and "IT Doesn't Matter". This response essay is to one of Nicholas Carrs articles in particular from The Atlantic called, “ Is Google Making Us Stupid “ where he argues that due to our ‘skimming and hooping ‘ done on the internet from one hyperlink to another , our brains are rewiring and the entire basis of how we think , read and remember is changing.here, Carr argues that due to this rewiring,
The internet is changing us.Absolutely. It is changing us to become quicker, more impulsive, more distracted people who probably aren’t very skilled at deep reading. And to most first generation people, such as Carr, this seems to be a huge apocalypse that is going to destroy all of humanity. Whereas, it isnt. Not at all. This is a change, perhaps an evolutionary one. But like most changesthat occured, the wide usage of the internet is bound to bring a new, exciting era of technology. Perhaps even, artificial intelligence. This is my first argument.My second is against Carr’s liberal usage of the term ‘ stupid ‘. Through his essay, he fails to explain the relevance of this term, so it seems as if it is carelessely thrown around. Knowledge is subjective. It depends on the era one lives in, where one lives, their field of expertise and so many more. Thus, people need to look at it as and evolution of ‘ knowledge ‘ as a whole and expiring from the traditional sense of knowledge which required an ability to read deeply and analyse lengthy
So does Carr. And the easiest method to deal with this change is to be critical of it. Carr argues that we are losing certain intelligece, the intelligence of reading’ longlish articles ‘and‘ reading in the traditional sense’(3). These skills are important. No doubt. But they certainly were much more important earlier. Today, we are living in a generation of short quick clear messages. These skills are rarely found. In contrast to earlier, when one had to analyse lengthy books to find simple facts, today, the same data and much more can be found with short texts within miliseconds. We are progressing towards a world where we need a quick list of facts, where one can learn a difficult skill such as calculus within hours due to a few youtube videos. Thus this skill of ‘ hopping and skimming’ that we have cognitively developed is comparatively more