Smart Vs Stupid

In just a matter of seconds, most people can memorize the contents from a television advertisement or the Internet. Just after watching an advertisement for a few seconds, a child can probably recite half of the whole script. Media has a way of getting to our minds within a few seconds of a glance. With its never-ending reach to billions of people, it is really necessary for social media to be beneficial for the population. Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and Johnson’s “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” focus on how media have changed the way in which we learn and grow as individuals in today’s world. They express how television and Google can have an impact on an individual to such an extent which was previously unimaginable. Although both of these writers have a different perspective about the usefulness of social media, but they both agree that media has a large impact on the lives of people. While Johnson argues that television is having a positive effect on the society and is making us smarter, Carr contends that Internet, especially Google, makes us stupid and is detrimental in our growth as intellectual beings. While both authors are taking completely different paths, they still have a lot of similarities in their thought processes. If one considers each argument separately instead of together, one can infer that both authors are considering arguments that defy what the current society and tradition teaches us. Also, both of these authors try to examine the changes in our society due to the incoming of media like Google and television. How both authors try to put their points across is really different and each one could be benefited by the style of the other author. Carr uses ethos as well as logos to prove his point and Johnson compares examples of television shows from the past and the present to argue for a change in the criteria used to determine if a television show is good or not. Carr uses a few studies of Internet behavior and also how text on the Internet is streamlined to make browsing fast. He wraps up his argument by shedding light on what would we be loosing during the shift from the old form of information accessing to mediums like Google. If Carr would have included and contrasted examples from the past and future, like Johnson did about the change in the ways of information access and how it is inclining towards being detrimental for the society, his argument would have been a lot more persuasive. On the other hand, Johnson could have included some personal anecdotes like Carr did and should have also tried to focus more on ethos. Television is something that binds a huge number of humans to together when it comes to digital entertainment. Including some fragments of ethos like Carr did, would definitely have made Johnson’s argument more persuasive to the readers, taking into account the number of people who are dependent on television for entertainment/information. Although both of these essays are two opposite sides of a spectrum, both of these authors would agree on the point that media should be used to educate people and advocate the intellectual growth of the society. “Google makes us Stupid” as well as “Television makes us smarter”, both implicitly imply that these media should serve a greater good. The common issue here is bigger than Google or television and is not about how it makes us more smart or stupid. The common issue is how technology should make us smart and serve a greater good. Both essays not only kindle a whole new thought in the heart of the reader, but also encourage the reader to take an unconventional path. While it is true that combining both essays makes the reader realize how important technology is in our lives and it should be impacting lives in a positive way. Secondly, combining these two essays makes the reader realize that sometimes the easiest explanation is not the correct and one should always thrive to dig deeper into concepts and search for the truth. Mark Twain once said, “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” He perfectly describes the idea that is being conveyed in these two passages: never settle, for facts can always obscure the truth.