I am sitting on the train, reading the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” on my laptop while listening to latest hip-hop music, typing up my essay and drinking my morning coffee. I take a moment to acknowledge how easier my life is because I rely on technology to do most of my work. I quickly glance out the window to see that I still have three more stops before I have to get off. As I regain my focus back to my laptop, I notice an old woman sitting next to me writing in her notebook. I notice the book contains her daily plans, and say to myself “Wow someone needs a reality check! It’s the twenty-first century for goodness sake!” I carry on with my work until the train conductor announces “Next Stop Temple University”. I begin gathering …show more content…
He argues, the internet is affecting our ability to concentrate by saying, “My concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text” (Carr 1). The internet forces the brain to divert its attention from the the task in front of them, which causes concerns about education and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder also known as …show more content…
Pop-up ads are constantly on every link, along with flashy signs and music to keep us from concentrating on the task. This ultimately leads to multitasking. We assume that we can handle all the information thrown at us together, but in reality it is too much. An experiment done by Thomas Buser and Noemi Petter involved three groups. The first group consisted of participants who worked on two tasks consecutively for twelve minutes each. The second group had to alter between these two tasks every four minutes for the same amount of time. Subjects in group three were not notified of how many switches were going to occur and for how long. The three group’s total time spent on each task was equal to prevent any lurking variables. The results of this experiment showed work schedules can be an important factor in productivity. The results emphasized that participants who focused on one task at a time, had a higher productivity rate than the subjects that tried to multitask. Machines can run several applications at one time while keeping one hundred percent concentration on each, precisely because it is a machine, people simply cannot. Carr agress that the internet has almost taken control over people. He says, “The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and
istraction. Did that get your attention? While technology is the very thing that provides us with answers, it is also the cause of our distractions. Alina Tugend essay “Multitasking Can Make You Lose… Um… Focus” and Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” reflects on the purpose of how technology can cause delusional reactions upon our brain. Tugend is a columnist for the New York Times and also an author who appeared in the Los Angeles Times on many occasions. As for Carr, he has written widely on technology, business, and culture while observing the latest technologies and related issue. Together they seem like vastly different individuals, but Tugend and Carr’s essay essentially serve the same purpose to their audience. Authors Carr and Tugend reveal the purpose of harmful technology and the limitations cast upon the human brain through individual implementations of pathos, examples, and the voice of their tone.
Carr describes how he thinks that the internet is making him lose his focus, he can't read for longer times, makes him uneasy and starting to look for a distraction while reading. Carr explains in depth in the article that how the internet is taking over our lives, we found
Since the rise of technology and smart devices, the public has seen controversy over the benefits and drawbacks of internet usage. Nicholas Carr shared his opinions in the article “From The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” In the text, he claims that it seems to be “chipping away” his “capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 5). In addition to that, he does not hesitate to state how “some worry they’re becoming chronic scatterbrains” from using the web (Carr 6). His views are painted purple in this piece of writing, as any reader could infer that Carr possesses a slightly bitter tone when it comes to the interwebs. He displays his dislike for the way it is reshaping our brains and mental function, even going
In Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he discusses the negative impacts that technology has had on human intelligence and how technology is going to pass up humankind. Carr’s main point is that point is that due to modern innovations like the internet, himself and the rest of mankind have slowly lost the ability to read in-depth and focus on complex tasks. He also argues that companies like google are working to create innovations in Artificial Intelligence, causing technology to eventually pass up humanity. Carr believes that technology is important, but it will eventually lead to our demise.
“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
When assessing the risks of digital technology’s role in our future, many reflect on the developments of new technology throughout history. Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” uses historical examples to support his claim that we should fear technological advancements. In contrast, Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, authors of “The Influencing Machines,” examine both sides of the issue and ultimately conclude that we should not fear technological development. One technological development Carr as well as Gladstone and Neufeld examined was the printing press. Carr asserts that most of the arguments about the printing press turned out to be correct including that it “would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars
The uses of technology like computers and cell phones are growing every day with new uses and forms. There are mixed feelings about if technology is making us smarter or stupider thru out day to day life. Nicolas Carr a New York Times writer wrote an article about “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and he tries to show people that computers are making our lives simpler and there for making us as humans stupid. Another writher that goes by the name Greg is a writer for digitaltonto.com, and he found the previous article and wrote “How Computers Change the Way We learn” which is about how all lot of the facts in Carr article could have been read to say anything that the author wanted, so he could make people believe.
With the rise of technology, society is beginning to wonder if it is helping or hurting us. Many people privileged enough to have technology, argue that though technology is helping the world advance, it is altering our thoughts and perceptions. In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he blatantly calls out the current generation and expresses his concerns about how the internet is changing the way people interpret information. Carr’s main claim is that the internet is causing people to lose their ability to concentrate and think on their own. Google can affect our cognition but depending on its uses it can make people smarter.
In Nicholas Carr’s article entitled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” he explains that the up rise of computers, and technology, has taken a toll on the former ability to read and understand what is being read. Suddenly, what was once so simple is now a prolonged, agonizing task which readers like Carr have experienced. The infamous internet has become the basis for information people seek to collect. Personally, I think Carr’s interpretation of the increase in technology is most accurate when referring to the overtake of artificial intelligence, the inability to read small to large amounts of written work, and the obvious change in the way we think as a person.
In Nicholas Carr’s article “Does the Internet Make you dumber” he emphasizes how the Internet causes distractions and leads to lack of focus turning us into scattered superficial thinkers. Carr talks about how multitasking makes it hard for us to sustain concentration and meaningfully understand and retain knowledge. Carr uses experiments conducted in highly recognized universities such as Cornell and Stanford to support his claim. In the experiment conducted by Cornell University half of the class was allowed to use their internet-connected laptops and the other half had to keep them shut. The half that glanced the web did much inferior on the subsequent test of how well they retained the lectures content.
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
We often encounter distractions all around in our daily lives. Our attention is divided between different tasks, which make it difficult to focus. The internet plays an important role in distracting individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. According to Nicholas Carr, “When we 're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.”(Carr 224). The internet plays an important role in why it is difficult for individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. The internet has many distractions that can often lead us to multitasks and not fully focus on one task. For example, I have seemed students in class using their laptops not for education purposes but searching
Using the internet for so long has made us addicted, and we constantly rely on it. If you are doing a simple task, such as reading a book, it is a lot harder to concentrate because of the distraction that comes with the Net. Carr’s take on this is
I read your essay ‘Google is making us stupid’ and it was a very challenging and impressive piece of writing which led me to think about the purpose of your essay. The purpose of this writing is based on facts, examples and evidences. It explains how Google or the internet itself is changing the way we process information. Personally, I think the main argument of your essay is how the internet gives bad influences to our reality today and how internet may have negative effects on the human mind. This article is so well organized in a way that the audience can’t deny your arguments. The reason that I’m writing a letter to you is to appreciate your work, and the way you taught us how internet has a bad influence on us. It was a good idea to tell people about the danger of over-using internet based on the audiences’ and your experience. As I experience the same situation right now, I strongly agree that internet really disturbs my studies a lot. While studying, it is a habit to use my phone. Therefore, I lose my concentration, and would have to finish my
Thousands of websites are distracting students from studying time. In an experiment at Cornell University, students who used internet-connected laptops during a lecture did much worse on a subsequent test than students who did not use the internet (Carr, 2010). It indicated that using the internet in class impacts students’ attention span (2010). Distractions can take attention away from learning. In fact, using the internet does not promote study efficiency, but wastes time.