Nicholas Carr

Carr has a more negative opinion about new technology than Cascio. Carr believes the internet and previous technological advancements have caused many changes in society, including reducing people’s ability to focus. Carr says, “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” This is just one of the many times that he blames the internet for the changes that have occurred in the past decade.

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.

New technology around the world is being developed and improved every day to make people's life easier. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr explains his thoughts and beliefs on how he feels that the internet, especially google is making people rely more on the web to find information and making them full with artificial knowledge. The author begins his article by explaining personal side effects that he has experience due to the use of the web, like losing focus, not being able to deeply understand a book anymore, and the reasons why he gets distracted when reading. The author then talks furthermore about his life being surrounded by the internet and how it is to blame the web for the issue that he has experience; but then he explains how and why the internet has been “godsend” to him because of his profession as a writer. In order to draw

Nicholas Carr is the author of books concerning technology and culture. One of his most recent bestsellers regarding the topic is his work titled What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. In the summer of 2008, Carr’s piece, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, was published in The Atlantic Monthly. In this essay, Carr declares that the Internet is altering the way people think (500). Carr writes that the Internet lowers the ability for concentration and consideration (501). He believes the ability to read and understand a lengthy piece of writing has also been practically entirely lost (Carr 501). Carr additionally states that the Internet has severed our capability to interpret text (502).

In an article by Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, the author is questioning the readers about the internet and making suggestions that the internet is changing how our brains operate. Throughout the article, the author's main point is to inform us about the negative effects of the internet on humans.

Nicholas Carr argues in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that the internet is changing the way we think and work for the worst by reducing our ability to concentrate on books, and long articles. Google is reshaping our brain, we have become accustom to skimming through headline and jumping from one article to the next without completing the first. The internet is altering our learning by giving us access multiple distraction such as emails, social media, and advertisements all these factors contributing to our lack of concentration when attempting to absorb information.

When we need to look for a definition of a word, where do we go? Google. When we want to search for more details about a breaking news that just came out on television, where do we go? Google. Whether it is for school or work, the main source that people rely on to get enough information is Google. Nicholas Carr, the writer of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” claims that the internet has been detrimental for human beings by the way they process information into their brains, their own way of thinking, and creating negative effects upon concentration. Carr uses plenty of different methods to prove his point such as, playing the audience’s emotions while using anecdotes, sharing his observations from his own perspective and using research. He believes that everyone should be skeptical of the internet because of the way it might be shaping the way we think. A comparison between the past and the present are is told to let the readers know how it changed not only him, but others as well.

Nicholas Carr wrote an article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” explaining the disadvantages of the internet, and Jamais Cascio wrote a counter article, “Get Smarter,” claiming how the technology and internet in today’s age is beneficial. Carr claims that humans have a different thought process and shorter attention span due to the internet. He believes that people are looking for shorter articles and quicker answers. Cascio believes that humans are evolving their thought process for the benefit of humanity. He states that the internet is in its early stages, and with time will improve our thought processes.

Nicholas Carr, a technology, culture and economics writer, examines the impact technological innervation has on the way people act and think on a daily basis. His recent difficulties concentrating while reading books and lengthy articles has led him to believe that his time spent online may be contributing to his lacking concentration and contemplation skills. By prefacing his argument with anecdotes from his friends and acquaintances, he is convinced that a new type of reading and interpreting is emerging. Unlike the instinctive skill of speech, reading and writing are learned characteristics that Carr believes are being taught in a new way thanks to the amount of time people spend on the Internet. He believes that the neural circuitry of the brain is beginning to be shaped by the Internet, rather than by the books people read, the way it was shaped in the past. This provides the reasoning as to why Carr thinks that Internet may be making the population stupid.

He believes that the web has slowed his brain down because in today’s generation we now have cellphones, labtops, iPads and other sources that was not even thought about in the past. We have new ways to research, watch and learn. He uses a quote from Maryanne Wolf “above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace” (wolf). Carr believes that before all the technology we were able to access our brain to our full ability because we had to.

With the fast-paced development of technology, internet plays a more and more important role in our life. While acknowledging the convenience provided by the internet, Nicholas Carr expressed his concern that it negatively influenced our capability of deep reading and thinking in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? Published in the 2008 issue of the Atlantic. However, there existed some weaknesses in his arguments due to the use of overstated pathos, inappropriate examples, and faulty logics, which to some extent hurt his persuasiveness.

In this day and age, most human beings rely on computers almost daily. This is even more true of the Internet. There is a vast amount of information available at the users fingertips almost instantly. Nicholas Carr, author of the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" scrutinizes this and how this power affects people's brains. Carr, who is a Pulitzer finalist and accomplished author of successful books analyzing topics such as technology and culture believes that, because theat Internet is so heavily relied upon these days, our critical reading skills and ability to sit for extended periods of time and read books are deteriorating. Though Carr makes some valid points in his article, I do not think that the dystopian picture he paints is entirely accurate.

Carr’s argument, boiled down, is basically that, due to the vast and easily accessed amount of information available on the internet, people are being “reprogrammed” to pass over that information quickly rather than furthering a “deeper comprehension and understanding” of it. He also argues that the internet (and, by extension, computers) are splitting our attention, forcing it away from what we are reading though advertisements and pop-up or notifications, furthering the issue of our shallow comprehension and short attention spans.

In his article, “Is Google making Us Stupid,” Carr argues that the Internet has altered the way that we view the information that we get from the websites on the internet and the way that we process the information. He provides many personal and professional examples that

The internet has become a useful tool for people to use in the pursuit of knowledge since 1991. Websites like Google, allow users to instantly look up information to gain immediate understanding on that topic. However, some people believe that Google and other search engines are doing the opposite and instead are making us “stupid”. Nicholas Carr wrote an article titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. The author did succeed in persuading his claim that Google makes people stupid in the article by formatting the article to engage the reader, the use of rhetorical appeal to connect with the audience, and the people use to support his claim.