Is Google Making Us Stupid

With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer

Nicholas Carr is an American author who writes the majority of books and articles about the continuously evolving world of technology and how it is effecting our society. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. In this essay I will be rhetorically analyzing Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in 2008. The purpose of Carr’s essay was to bring light to an issue that many of us face but only a meniscal few have come to terms with; and that is that technology is mentally incapacitating our society and simultaneously making us lazy. This essay was intended for anyone was has been consumed in today’s culture by new technological advances to the extent of not being able to function without some sort of device, IE cellphone, laptop or tablet on a daily basis.

In our culture today we see the progression of how technology has affected our social makeup. In “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the writer makes clear that our current use of technology has diminished our ability to think critically. While one could agree with Carr’s point, there is also an issue that has a greater level of concern. Our ability to think critically about the information we gather is only a resultant consequence of the population’s new-found focus on technology rather than relating intentionally. Why is it that our current social constructs are made up almost entirely of technology? What happened to the time when humans interacted outside of their obsession to seek comfort from what lacks any empathy (their phones), rather than real humans?

Although its intention was to nourish our minds with an instant unlimited source of valuable information, the internet has caused some people to lose their appreciation for long texts and their ability to concentrate. Within the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the author feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain and that he can no longer enjoy reading a book of any length because he cannot sustain concentration on the book (Carr 1). This is a result of the fact that when people use the internet to find information, they habituate themselves to skim along the lines to quickly allocate their answers and once they have gotten what they needed, they close the browser without any further analysis of the information.

With new technological advancements occurring more rapidly each year, it is no surprise that there is an extensive conversation about how these new progressions impact the brain’s development and cognition. One trend is evident: there is a universal acknowledgment that technology is indeed changing the way we think. Among the members contributing to this conversation, two strikingly different outlooks on how these changes will affect the future exist. Either we should be terrified, or worrying is premature. Articles written by experts specializing in psychology and the brain, such as Pinker’s “Mind Over Mass Media,” as well as "How Has the Internet Reshaped Human Cognition?" by Kee and Loh, as well as and finally “Children, Wired- for

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

In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he begins the article with a description of a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the Space Odyssey Dave Bowman argues with the supercomputer, HAL. HAL pleads to Bowman to not disconnect his circuits that control his “brain”. The computer feels his mind going; this is a feeling that Carr has also had.

Google Inc. is one of the leading computer search engines in the world and is continuing to grow as the

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

Throughout history, no single piece of technology has been so heavily relied upon such as the internet. Things such as the first car, the first telephone, and even the first airplanes were not as easily, or readily accessible as the Net is today. In all reality, the internet is the greatest and most useful tool that humanity has ever dreamt up. From instant transferring of data to endless sources of information, the Net not only connects all corners of the world, but makes each and every person more knowledgeable and self-aware. But as with all new and virtuous things, there is a darker and more dangerous side. The internet is a tool that consumes the intellectual, changing the way the brain functions and ultimately creating a reliance. This reliance is so severe that all of life’s functions depend on the internet without the same dependency being reciprocated. The relationship is one sided, where the Net has much to gain while the user has little. Furthermore, in its relatively new state, the internet is very obscure and has very questionable ethics. Although beneficial in specific cases, the internet affects one’s emotional state and latently mars cognitive function while creating a devastatingly powerful and coercive reliance.

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.

Google is the most popular search engine that the world uses on an everyday basis. Sergey Brin and Larry Page created Google in 1998. What started out to be a small search engine and ranking system are now the worlds most profitable Internet companies of our time. Google has created many products today that have changed the world of technology, products such as Google+, YouTube, Android, Motorola Mobility, the Nexus 7 tablet computer, Google Wallet, and Google Glass (p.470). Google is qualified as one of the best companies to work for (p.464.) The issue we are facing today is the privacy policy

Google is a company that was conceptualized in a dorm room by two Stanford University college students in 1996 (Arnold, 2005, p. 1) and has morphed into one of the greatest technological powerhouses in operation today. What began as merely a means to analyze and categorize Web sites according to their relevance has developed into a vast library of widely utilized resources, including email servicing, calendaring, instant messaging and photo editing, just to reference a few. Recent statistics collected by SearchEngineWatch.com reflects that of the 10 billion searches performed within the United States during the month of February, 2008, an impressive 5.9 billion of them were executed by Google (Burns, 2008). Rated as Fortune Magazine’s

According to the article, Google was initially called BackRub, but was changed to Google in 1997; “a mathematical term called googol, which is the numerical one followed by one hundred zeros” (Keeline 510). The term reflects Page, and Brin 's mission to organize an infinite amount of information on the web. In 1998, PC Magazine named Google the top search engine in its Top 100 Web Site because of the search engine 's “uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” (Keeline 510). The report from PC Magazine gave Google its first recognition in public. In 2006, Google became so popular that the word google was added as a verb to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, and Oxford English Dictionary. Both dictionaries listed the word as “to search for information on the Internet using the Google search engine” (Keeline 510). Google search engine separated itself from its competitors because of its relevant search results.

Undoubtedly, the biggest strength of Google is that it is the exclusive and unique search engines, Google has more than 65% of the market share for internet searches and the competitors do not even come close to anywhere that Google does.