Article Summary: Is Google Making USupid, By Nicholas Carr

In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr expresses his beliefs and personal experiences on how the internet has altered our brains and how we think. He addresses the fact that, although our brains’ abilities to deep read and concentrate are suffering, the internet is extremely beneficial and convenient. Because of the easy accessibility, it takes little to no effort to find information, and therefore, a minimal amount of thinking is required. Carr highlights that people are more impatient because of the internet and that our minds are becoming more erratic. The author used research, conducted by a U.K. educational consortium, to show that a new form of reading is developing over time; rather than reading every word on a page, it has turned to more of a skimming method. Nicholas Carr realizes that we may be doing more reading than ever due to the internet, but it is different in the way that people have to interpret the text. Reading, unlike talking, is not a natural ability. One must learn to deep read, make connections, and translate the underlying meaning. Overall, Carr believes it is a mistake to rely fully on computers because in the end, it will just be our own intelligence that morphs into artificial intelligence.

There is no denying the incredible library of knowledge the internet has made readily available for all to use. Having such a resource is transforming modern society in many ways, as it brings insight and news across the world at a moment’s notice, all the while enhancing educational and technological advancements. However, according to Sven Birkets, an American essayist and literacy critic, in his essay, “The Owl Has Flown”, it is not without fault as observations are to be made on how this new resource has transformed people’s intelligence and wisdom. The author theorizes that the large, almost unlimited, library that is now being offered by services such as the internet, reshapes the public’s knowledge. Knowledge is transformed to be horizontal or insubstantial compared to the much deeper lateral understanding pertaining to older generations because of the amount of time they spent dwelling on a much smaller set of resources. This observation made by Birkets in the late 90’s is expanded upon, and modernized by Nicholas Carr, an American writer and author, in a more inflicting and self-reflecting article for The Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains”. Carr does not just blame the Google search engine in this claim, but the internet as a whole on how it impacts concentration and our ability to contemplate. These cognitive impacts are observed and explained in more scientific terms by Eric Jaffe, a regular Observer

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

“The Net seizes our attention only to scatter it,” Carr says. Then the Swedish neuroscientist Torkel Klingberg tells Carr human beings “wants more information, more impression, and information complexity”. “When our brains is overtaxed, we find ‘distractions more distracting,’” and “we can’t translate new information into schemas, while our ability to learn suffers”. “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing,” writes Carr. Bruce Friedman, a blogger who describes how the internet is altering his mental habits to Carr told him “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the Web or in print”. Jim Taylor, Ph.D. writes in his article. “Using the internet is like a jet skiing, in which the jet skier is skimming along the surface of the water at high seed exposed to a broad vista, surrounding by many distractions, and only able to focus fleetingly on one

In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr, he describes the correlation between Internet usage and common reading abilities. While informing the audience about the decreasing reading habits and the power of the Net.

In his essay, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr discusses societies dependence to easily accessible information. Since the inception of the internet and search engines, information has been accessible to us instantly. Although instant access to information is a desirable advancement in technology, it comes with questionable consequences. From his own personal experience, Carr explains that since this invention, his brain feels as if it has been tinkered with. Carr explains that his brain does not work the way it used to, that it’s very hard for him to become engrossed in books, articles, or essays. As he continued to try to become engrossed in these readings, he found that his thoughts would wander and he would become restless after just a few

Throughout his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr uses several terms and phrases that enhance his argument. One key term that is central to Carr’s argument is the word “reprogramming”. Carr uses this word several times throughout his article to assert his claim that the Internet is “reprogramming” or changing our minds in a way that alters our thinking and memory. By using this term, it seems that Carr adds gravity to the possibility that the Internet is changing our minds for the worst. Likewise, Carr mentions that the Internet is interfering with our “concentration” and causing it to “drift” from certain activities such as deep reading. He argues that our brain is scattering with frequent use of the Internet. It is hard

In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”, Nicholas Carr points out the fact that google is affecting our brains. He explains how being able to access information more quickly is minimizing the amount of thinking we have to do on our own and therefore preventing our brain to do deep thinking. On the second paragraph the author says, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it more strongly when I’m reading”. I strongly agree with the author’s point because when I used to live in the Dominican Republic I didn’t have access to google and had to go to the library and check out books to do my homework assignments. I wasn’t intimidated by the length of the reading and was able to find the

In his Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr contends that the overload of information is “chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation”(315). He admits with easy accessibility of information online, the process of research has became much simpler(Carr 315). Yet such benefit comes with a cost. Our brains are “rewired” as the cost of such convenience(Carr 316). As the result, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s...but it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking”(Carr 317). Carr argues the forming of such habits can prevent us from deep reading and thinking. In fact, he provides may evidences in the

In, “Is Google Really Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr (2008), he validates how people are heavily relying on the internet pushing for Artificial Intelligence. Carr also talks about how it is changing the way our minds work with negative side effects. He demonstrates how the internet may be shaping our thought process by giving observational examples as well as personal experiences. Beginning with his personal experiences he says how he finds it difficult to keep focused on a book, as a writer, this is rare to him. He tries to find a reason to his inability to stay focused and comes to a conclusion it is due to the internet. Carr is very persuasive in his article, although his point of view maybe seen as an opinion, he does show and support

As I read the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicolas Carr, I cannot help but see the influence of how internet use can affect your thinking ability and create a negative effect on how think. We can use the internet for all sorts of resources in our daily lives but, the problem is that nobody puts the work in anymore and is finding the fastest way to get the “A,” while not grasping the concept resulting in them not being knowledgeable in their field of work. By them just skimming instead of understanding, they are not fully learning. For example, many of us can look at something and not remember what it was that we looked at the following day. This paper will be discussing the pros and cons of Nicolas Carr’s thoughts on Google, and how the search engine turned GPS, email, and so on is affecting the brains of today.

The internet can be great source of information, but it has a negative effect on the human brain. In Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he describes how the internet has negatively effected his brain by stating, “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 733). The internet has a huge impact on the thinking process of the human brain and it is completely changing the human ability to concentrate for long periods of time, human reading skills, and the configuration of the brain.

An article published in The Atlantic entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” criticizes to what effect the internet has on our cognition. Despite the title of the article, technology writer Nicholas Carr does not target Google specifically, but rather the World Wide Web as a whole; moreover, he attributes his recent troubles concentrating while reading books and more-lengthy articles to the long hours he has been spending on the internet.

The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a

Nicholas Carr published The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains in 2011 as a result of his own personal experiences and observations of his own behavior. The book was published by W.W. Norton & Company with ISBN 978-0-393-33975-8. Carr began working on the book after he noticed that since the birth of the internet, he did not think in the same ways that he used to think; he was easily distracted and had trouble concentrating on tasks requiring a lot of thought (2011). This effect, he noticed, was not unique to him. Many of his colleagues reported that they too had lost a lot of interest in reading books, had trouble concentrating and were easily distracted (Carr, 2011). What if, Carr wondered, everyone doesn’t just prefer to do their reading on the internet for its inherent convenience and speed but rather, what if the internet was actually changing the way we all think?