Backrub: A Personal Business Analysis

Nicholas Carr is well known American writer who has written article and books based on business, technology and culture. In 2011, he was the finalist for Pulitzer Prize in General Notification for his book The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains.In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he wrote for The Atlantic on Jul 1, 2008. It's very plausible, complicated and persuasive article. The article makes many believable connections to every day's life, compelling people by using metaphors, staying true to the point and using different rhetorical approaches.

I recently read Mr. Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, and I must say I do agree with Carr somewhat, but I strongly disagree. In the beginning of the article, Carr states that a few years ago he could read in-depth and for pages on an Internet article. Now, he says, that he cannot help but “skim” through an article in seconds; he feels that Internet search engines like “Google” (I list it specifically hence the article's title) make information so very accessible and immediate that it damages his reading. Although I can sympathize for him, I can not say I empathize because I am a different person with a different way of reading and thinking.

In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” by Nicholas Carr argues that google is indeed making us stupid. Carr first introduces his argument stating: “the more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing,”(Carr 315). But right after introducing his personal opinion, he mentions the opinions of other bloggers and scholars that think the internet has indeed had that effect on them. But, in order to order to prove his argument, Carr relied on evidence derived from studies and by relating what google is doing to us now to what occurred in the past.

Is Google making us stupid? That is a fascinating question with a not so simple answer. Nicholas Carr does a fantastic job of expressing his skepticism about Google; However, he does not bring much in the way of facts, uses broad speculation and relies on a few thoughts of others to bring his skepticism to light. Carr is not very convincing in his manner of trying to reach the rest of the world with his message that Google is hurting us rather than helping us.

For almost two decades, Google has surely been the top dog of search engines on the worldwide internet. Beginning as a research project by two college students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, called Backrub, Google has now become the answer to all questions. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. According to Niholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he states that our use of the internet has serious effects on the way we real, think, and live. Carr’s struggle along with his friends who he’s said are experiencing these same struggles, seem to be putting the blame on the internet for their lack of attentiveness, when there can be other underlying issues other than excessive use of the web affecting your brain.

For one thing, Google, like the railroad in its time, is an important part of how people interact with each other today. People use Google to digitally meet with others, communicate, and even sell things. Multiple people are affected by Google each day. 87% of people have claimed to use the internet in 2016 (Anderson). To add onto this the number of people who don’t use the internet has been decreasing since 2000.

I found the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid? “, written by Elizabeth Carr, very interesting (Carr, 2005). I enjoyed how it provided different examples of the increased dependency on technological advances in today's society. This increased dependency has also cause an increased demand for the ability to have access to the internet in almost any place; you can now have a car that has a continuous connection to an internet source so you’re never off the grid.

Google is the most popular search engine in the entire world. Google made the biggest impact on the internet. All the question to the answer is one click away, without doing tons of research and hard work. Despite it makes our lives easy, in the article “Is Google making us stupid” by Nicholas Carr, Carr pointed out many issues caused by using google.

What do you do with this information? Google does have the ability to teach people how to do things on their own or create something on their own in order to make life just a little bit more simple. This is a great thing until something goes wrong or this person who got their knowledge off of Google starts to question a professional with maybe thirty to forty years of experience. For example, if someone just read an article on Google about how build a house because they are about to be getting a house built themselves, there is a possibility that they will believe that they know a lot on this topic. This is where the self pride may kick in, so the builder comes in and tells them the procedure, but this person who read the article may try to argue with the builder because of the information they believe they retained. This becomes a problem for both sides. Also, Google offers such a large quantity of information, that the value of thoughtfully reading a book is completely taken

I agree with Nicholas Carr's theory, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Carr argues that search engines, blogs, hyperlinks, etc. dump more information that one can possibly read. I agree with that, and I think

Nicholas Carr, Harvard alumni and member of Encyclopedia Britannica’s editorial board of advisors, questioned the effects of search engines on our minds in his article to The Atlantic entitled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” claiming that the use of search engines causes a loss of the ability to deeply read and as therefore causes our minds to lose the ability to process information. He used personal stories to depict the apparent change in his and others ' minds from having the ability to "read deeply," to habitually skimming over the text in an effort to hastily extract information. Specifically targeting the leaders of the Google search engine - whom he said believe that, "Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed," - he related several causal reasons as to why the engines affect our minds negatively. He used a study on online research habits from the University College London to stress the point that people conducting research tend to read "no more than one or two pages of an article or book

What Google does is ease the life of students by granting them access to resources such as articles, books, websites, and other types of media, which saves their time and makes their busy lives more manageable (Wright 370). They get their information, and they get it fast. This extra time saved by using the Web provides students with the time to discover more information about a specific subject in order to deepen their knowledge. Furthermore, students are able to increase their intelligence when they obtain more information in a shorter period of time instead of spending hours in a book.

To start, I use Google pretty regularly as anyone would if they have access to technology like in today’s society. I personally use Google whenever I need an address for a certain store or a phone number for said store. No one uses phonebooks anymore, when I can just easily type the name in the browser and have accurate results show up in seconds. I also use Google for directions or news updates. Google is extremely helpful because most people live their lives through their phones and Google is right there when you have literally any question and it will be answered in just a few seconds. Other benefits from Google are that the most relevant sites are shown when you look something up. This is very important because if you are looking something up and something else totally irrelevant comes up it is very confusing. Not only that but, Google is ad-free and for someone who is on the Web a lot, ads are extremely annoying and a waste of time. Finally, Google has about one trillion sites indexed as well which is pretty amazing.

It is true that people are becoming more and more reliant on the internet to do everyday tasks. I feel that Carr addresses the issue perfectly in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. If we continue to use technology for everything, we will eventually lose all ability to deep read and make those critical connections that are necessary for true comprehension and application. He indicates that “the more [he] uses the web, the more he has to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (736). Knowing how difficult it was to read and analyze Carr’s article myself, I fully agree with his claims. Having grown up in a world that has always had technology, I must be hyper-cognizant of the task at hand when it comes to something such as reading, particularly if it is something that I deem less than interesting. When I was finally able to get through the entire essay, I started to think about how much I use the internet. I must admit that

Nicholas Carrs article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” makes points that I agree with, although I find his sources to be questionable. The article discusses the effects that the Internet may be having on our ability to focus, the difference in knowledge that we now have, and our reliance on the Internet. The points that are made throughout Carrs article are very thought provoking but his sources make them seem invaluable.