A mere two decades ago, finding information meant scouring public libraries for days. Today, it means a few clicks of the mouse, a couple of words into Google, and a press of enter. Since the internet, professional knowledge has evolved from the purview of scholars to becoming easily accessible to the general public. However, in an article for the Atlantic, Nick Carr asked the question “Is Google making us stupid?” and goes on to argue that the internet has led to a diminished capacity for concentration and contemplation in its users (1). While this may not be entirely false, by and large, the internet is a step forward in the pursuit for knowledge and should be embraced and utilized in education.
The author 's tone changes in paragraph 4 when Carr talks about how the Internet has altered his mind by crumbling away at how much he can concrete. When Carr states “For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium” in paragraph four the author provides his counter argument which is to warn the incoming generations the dangers of the Internet before his main argument. Which is that the Internet is making us stupid and is altering how we think, by doing this it allows Carr to spend the rest of the article refuting his main argument.
In his article entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Carr expresses his concern over the way the internet is changing our brains. Every since he started skim reading on the internet he’s lost his ability to read for a long time; “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do” (Carr 314). Our minds have adapted to reading on the internet. We take in vast amounts of information in a short period of time and so anything that’s long can’t hold our attention. We are no longer to analyze and think deeply about texts because we can’t focus for that long. I definitely feel the effect of skim reading. I do read a lot but I don’t deep read. Whenever I’m trying
Nicholas Carr’s 2008 article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, argues that the Internet and access to vast amounts of information is corroding the attention spans and thought complexity of the billions of Internet users around the world. As Carr himself puts it, “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) He proposes that having many different sources at once will cause readers to skip around sporadically rather than thoughtfully consume information, and that Google has an agenda to cause this behavior due to their economic interests. Overall, Carr paints a cynical outlook on the prevalence in Google and any societal changes stemming from its use. David Weir’s 2010
Is Google making us stupid? Is Google making us stupid? Nicholas Carr posed the question via “The Atlantic” in 2008 and received an uproar of feedback. His argument was that the internet might have detrimental effects on cognitive capacity. The article in itself, according to online critics, was targeted more at the World Wide Web than at Google, specifically. Throughout the six page piece, he argued that reading on the internet is a shallower comparison to putting your nose in a book. Since then, the topic has been widely debated.
Nicholas Carr answers the question “Is Google making us stupid,” with claims and evidence from other individuals who have noticed a difference in their own reading, writing, and interpretation skills after spending too much time on the internet. Scanning quickly through online articles and skipping from link to link is what is leading individuals to a lack of deep reading and thought, as oppose to actually understanding and interpreting the text. By using other individuals personal experiences and evidence regarding the issue, Carr constructs the argument that Google, is indeed, making us stupid.
This research shows that people are not actually reading their source but hoping that maybe they will get their answer in “skimming” of the article. If they did not find what they needed right away they would just move on. The reader of the article would get a better understand of what they are looking for if they would read the article all the way, even if it is not what they are directly looking for it could give them some back ground. Carr stated in the article “ the internet is subsuming most of our other intellectual technology. It’s becoming our map, clock, print press…” (Paragraph 17). The internet is in all of our lives as stated above but it has been for a long time. For example the clock; people would look at the clock at noon and know that they are suppose to eat but before they had a clock people
Carr starts the article with a quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey. He explains the quote, talking about how the human is rewiring the computer, but then he parallels that with how computers have rewired his brain. I didn’t know who Nicholas Carr was, so I researched him. He is a highly respected author who has written for the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It appears that he relies heavily on his fame to convince readers of his point of view, because he uses his opinion quite often. Admittedly, he is something of an expert on the subject, but if the reader, like I, doesn’t know who he is, then a lot of this article is not effective.
In this article: Is Google Making Us Stupid ? NICHOLAS CARR reveals the epidemic effects of having the internet at our fingertips. The creation of Google has been an amazing feat that has changed the face of the Internet. A project that would usually take weeks using books, magazines, and encyclopedias can be done in the matter of days. He and his associates have stated personal effects of being accustomed to the Internet (specifically Google) . As a writer, he has problems reading for a prolong period of time or instead of reading an article, skimming it instead. He states his future worries of our generation losing the skills that allow us to have the willpower to read a book or complete a common task. Our cognition is greatly affected by the ease of obtaining information so
But firstly, he has to get audience’s attention by narrating a conversation in A Space Odyssey in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Then he believed that the Internet has changed his mind, he was mentioning that he cannot concentrate a reading book like he used to do. He thinks he know what’s going on in his mind, he starts to become bored after two or three pages. He uses evidence and quotations from various authors and expert that mention the Internet may affect our capacity for deep reading and the Internet is going to replace the way reading in the traditional sense. He used the speech from the CEO of Google to mention and show us that Google is inventing the search engine because of money. The technologies can rescue and solve any problem in the fastest way like the typewriter can replace for writing by hand, the mechanical clock can change habits and behaviors of human now. By those evidence and background issues above, Carr is showing us the Trait of Human Nature that people now embrace new technology, resist and who are indifferent. Also he is inviting the audience to agree with him that the Internet, technology and Google are bringing the distraction for our mind so we cannot concentrate on what is called self-dependent.
In recent years, Internet has become an integral part of our society. For many, the Web has started to act as the supreme source of news, knowledge and entertainment as it gives people an instant access to a nearly endless stream of information. According to Nicholas Carr, the use of Internet, though undoubtedly beneficial, may result in cognitive changes that affect our ability to think, learn, process or remember information. In his article “Is Google making us stupid?”, he expresses concern about the negative effects of spending long hours online.
The internet transforms our look at literature. The advent of technology transforms our vision of things, our way of life, learn to think on a daily basis. Is google making us stupid? That is the question posed by Nicholas Carr. This may lead us to the question of the influence of the internet and other systems on our daily habits; it appears that those can also affect our way of thinking critically.
In 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote a very profound article explaining how the internet that everyone has believed to be a useful tool in society and something to help us learn and grow, was actually making us less intelligent. On the first page of the article he starts to explain his own personal tribulations that the internet has caused him, like how his attention span was lessened by the immediate access of the internet. The reason his attention span was dwindling was because of the readily quick information on the internet that is easily accessible by the click of a button. Reading from the internet has caused him to scan things to get the gist of what the article is actually saying that he is reading. He talked to many others and he realized
The Mind Altering Net In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is Doing to our Brains,” Nicholas Carr argues that the internet has altered, possibly not in a good way, how people use their cognitive mind. Today, most everyone is getting on
Rhetorical Analysis of “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr Technology has rapidly developed and became a dominant factor in our society in the United States today. This essay’s purpose is to examine the effectiveness and relevance of the argument whether or not the convenience of the Internet has negatively affected people’s way of read and think by Nicholas Carr on his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. Despite the challenging title, Carr successfully raised his concern using anecdotes, research studies, and analogy between the Internet and the press in a neutral voice without denying the advantages of the Internet. Even though being published in 2008, the article’s argument is still a tricky question. This essay will discuss the background of the author and article, the main claim of the article, the rhetorical tools are used to support the main claim, and how it is still relevant to our society today.