Is Google Making Us Stupid?

of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in 2008 in the Atlantic, believes that the internet is “tinkering with our brains” and has even admitted to seeing changes within himself. Carr created this article to inform people about how societies ability to read and comprehend information is being changed or harmed by the use of the internet. Carr did have some errors such as structural problems with his thesis and also struggled with an informal writing style. Despite some of these errors, Carr’s use of rhetorical techniques such as ethos, pathos, logos, and ample amount of personal and factual information along with the emotional touches, allows him to develop a strong persuasive argument.

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

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

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, makes statements about how beneficial it can be for people to have information at our fingertips, but Carr also expresses how not only him, but other people say they feel almost illiterate, or foolish when they go back to read an actual book and analyze the text of a book or response they were once able to comprehend with no troubles.

Among the era of rapid development of science and technology, information technology, which is internet influences our lives, studies, and communications and works in every moment. We could use the internet to look for the required knowledge and help anytime we needed. In his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"Nicholas Carr uses his personal experience and research results to illustrate the impact internet create on its user. Although the title of the statement mentions the influence created by the searching engine, Google, the article also has describes some subtle changes that have happened on human brain and body during the progress of the technology. As a web writer, the author is

American writer, Nicholas G. Carr, in The Atlantic July/ August 2008 Issue titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that the amount of time we spend online, especially google, has caused us to lose our minds by “tinkering” with our brains, “reprograming our memory,” and changing the way in which we process information. Carr’s purpose is to contribute to the idea that “Google” along with other online tools, is programing us to be less attentive and to the inhibition of our critical thinking skills. Guided by personal experiences, subjectivity, presumptions, Carr concludes that our reliance on google and other online apparatuses has caused us to become “machinelike,” claiming that the understanding we have of the world and is “mediated” by computers, flattening our intelligence and converting it into artificial intelligence with no value. Carr’s theory is un-logical because it is based on presumptions that overgeneralize the role that online tools like google play on our lives, based on the experiences and opinions of a few. By ignoring the complexities of these tools and the numerous features they have to offer which help enable us to expand our way of thinking and analyzing information, Carr incorrectly assumes that because the amount of information we are gathering and attaining from online apparatuses like google, that we are becoming hollow computer like entities with little to no intelligence.

With the advent of Worldwide Web, telephones, telegraphs and other technologies human race has advanced with a speed, which was never even imagined few decades, down the line. Many people have been impacted with this change and a lot of people have questioned the effects of Internet on cognitive abilities and Human brain. There has been a debate to this argument whether Internet has a negative impact on cognition and human brain thus de-humanizing the human race or is it benefitting us by reaching the unimagined areas and achieving a comfortable lifestyle and setting us free from the shackles of stressful efforts.

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.

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.

There has been debate on how the growth of technological inventions is influencing the way humans think. For teenagers and young adults in my generation, it’s rather easy to adapt to new advancements since we grew up being introduced to so many inventions that took over the entire world’s interest in the past decade. I personally prefer to multitask than to focus on one task at hand and I can record more information in a less amount of time when I type on a keyboard. Therefore, I have an easier time learning and getting things done with techy tools than when I sit upright with just a pen and paper. But most skeptics that assume technology is a disease would argue that technology’s versatility and convenience could be a distracting to our thought process. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” author Nicholas Carr believes that the progress in technological innovation has had a derailing effect on our cognition; however, in the article, “Smarter Than You Think,“ Clive Thompson addresses how collaborating with today’s technological advances can actually give more opportunities to bring about more intelligence. Although Carr addresses how technology can be a major challenge to our critical thinking skills, Thompson arguably provides better evidence to show how technology actually challenges our skills to for the better by teaching us how to be more aware, giving us the opportunity to access the most amount of information, and creating a higher field of expertise for the

Many people may argue that technology has helped us become more efficient in today’s society. Technological advances such as the internet and Google has also opened up many new opportunities for people. However, with such advances some may argue that we begin to lose some of our cognitive thinking ability. In an essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he argues his thesis that people will lose concentration and cognitive thinking as a result to reading online. Carr begins by explaining how the many innovations of today’s technologies has changed the way one thinks. Carr continues by saying that the internet is affecting peoples concentration, however they use it for its convenience; to quickly scan an article and avoid “the traditional way of reading.” Carr then explains how Maryanne Wolf believes that the new style of reading has altered our ability to interpret and make deep mental connections. Carr shows support of how Frederick Nietzsche enhanced his style of writing beginning with a type writer in 1882. Carr then explains how neuroscience professor James Olds, discovered that nerve cells break apart and form new connections to form new habits. As explained by Danielle Bell and Lewis Mumford, Carr says intellectual technologies such as the mechanical clock, has divided action and thought; helping create the scientific method in a series of steps. Carr then explains how Alan Turning discovered that computers could be used as information processing device;

The internet is one of the many technologies to come about in this fast pace and ever evolving world. Within these new technologies, such as the internet, one can see how even people have evolved and changed their ways of thinking to keep up. One aspect of this change is the way people understand and think about what they read or see. In Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author present the idea that the use of the internet is the reason behind the changes within the minds of its users. This idea points towards the internet being both a mind altering and convenience mechanism; as well as being easily abused by its users. This allows Carr to effectively propose the idea that the internet, and technology in general, is used not only as a convenience mechanism, but also has a way to change how its uses think. However, Carr ineffectively represents how this change comes about due to user abuse of new technology like the internet.

With the rising of technology in the modern age, lots of new inventions have come out with it and it helps our life in significantly. But that growth of technology has also raised a vast amount of concerns, and most of it due to its negative effect on our mind – the users who benefit from it. Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” has strengthen those concerns by coming up with the idea that the advance in techonology is influencing our thoughts and behaviors to be functioned differently than the way they used to be.

Even from a cursory examination of the article Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, one of the chief problems with technology, which this article heavily focuses on, becomes apparent: many contemporary technologies, especially Google, remove much of the necessity for cognition within life in general. Therefore, the chief argument that will be posited here is one that agrees with the underlying point made by the author. That is, technology is certainly having a detrimental effect when it comes to overall cognition, and companies such as Google are the prime culprits here. However, at the same time, it is also important to note that these technologies, in and of themselves, are also beneficial, and should not be demonized to the extent that the author seems to be arguing here. This paper will take a look at some of the implications of this argument. For starters, the author 's primary argument is that the instantaneous nature of information, particularly in an age of ever-increasing computer and Internet speeds, trains the human brain into receiving this information extremely quickly (Carr 1). This might initially appear to be only beneficial, but the author is also quick to point out the ways that this apparently beneficial concept can actually go awry very easily. That is, the brain never knows when it has enough, and as such, it will almost consistently be seeking out information, continually refreshing pages and searching Google, among other tools, for the latest

Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Online article “Is google making us stupid?”talks about on how the use of the computer affects our cognitive behavior. He stated that many people do not use books, they would rather use google to find any information. Today Carr has found that “his concentration drifts away from the text after several pages and he struggles to get back into the text. His premise is that since he has spent the past ten years working online, searching and surfing and writing content for database. His brain circuitry has changed”(car,2-3). He is not thinking like he used to think