Nicholas Carr 's Is Google Making Us Stupid?

While reading a famous article by Nicholas Carr titled “Is Google Making us Stupid?,” I have concluded that it is not. I disagree with Carr’s argument because his view point corresponds with how technology is advancing. The way that the internet has shaped our lives has taken a great toll on the way we view the world now. There are a couple of ways that technology is improving. One would include books that are paperback turning into nooks and kindles along with blogging and texting. Another study shows that our brains are also changing and growing along with the internet. This shows that technology had advanced from the 70’s and 80’s when there wasn’t widespread access to the internet.

In the article “Is Google Making us Stupider?” in the magazine called “The Atlantic” the author, Nicholas Carr tells us about his difficulties with concentrating on a lengthy article or book. Carr claims that the difficulties he is experiencing may be caused by the increase of time he spends on the internet. His main argument is that the internet helps us rapidly access information that we search and causes us to obtain more information in such an easy manner that is why in his opinion Google is actually making us smarter. Carr gives an example from a magazine editor called John Batelle who says “When I am performing bricolage in real time over the course of hours I am feeling my brain light up I

As Carr continues, he speaks of his extended use of the internet over the last decade, explaining that all information that he once painstakingly searched for is done in minutes with the use of search engines. In doing this, Carr places blame on the internet for breaking his ability to concentrate. Carr presents his arguments in a way that his readers could easily agree. He gradually works up to the idea that the internet has weakened his ability to focus, and as he does this he makes several general statements about the internet’s nature. These points on the net’s nature are so basic that any reader of his article would be inclined to agree with them, and this lends itself to help readers believe the argument Carr wishes to propose. Because it would be hard to provide factual evidence to support his claims, Carr effectively uses logical reasoning to convince the reader.

Technology has evolved so much over the course of 82 years. People who were living in 1935 would have no clue what a computer is or what it could potentially become. Education itself and how we learn has come a long way. Everything was hand written. Now in 2017, we have every answer with just one touch of a button. Google is a search engine that holds almost every answer in the world. There are many opinions on the way humans in 2017 function, and process information. Nicholas carr is a respect author who writes about the relationship between technology and culture. He has written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, etc. He has written two great essay that have won The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best collected in Several Anthologies, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best Technology Writing. One of them which is titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.”  Nicholas Carr argues that Google is not making humans stupid, but as technology progress our minds must adapt and change the way we think and process information. This essay has many rhetorical approaches. Nicholas Carr uses imagery, opinion, ethos, and pathos to persuade his audience, provoking a doubt on whether google is making humans stupid.

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.

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

There is no denying the incredible library of knowledge the internet has made readily available for all to use. Having such a resource is transforming modern society in many ways, as it brings insight and news across the world at a moment’s notice, all the while enhancing educational and technological advancements. However, according to Sven Birkets, an American essayist and literacy critic, in his essay, “The Owl Has Flown”, it is not without fault as observations are to be made on how this new resource has transformed people’s intelligence and wisdom. The author theorizes that the large, almost unlimited, library that is now being offered by services such as the internet, reshapes the public’s knowledge. Knowledge is transformed to be horizontal or insubstantial compared to the much deeper lateral understanding pertaining to older generations because of the amount of time they spent dwelling on a much smaller set of resources. This observation made by Birkets in the late 90’s is expanded upon, and modernized by Nicholas Carr, an American writer and author, in a more inflicting and self-reflecting article for The Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains”. Carr does not just blame the Google search engine in this claim, but the internet as a whole on how it impacts concentration and our ability to contemplate. These cognitive impacts are observed and explained in more scientific terms by Eric Jaffe, a regular Observer

Media and technology are permeating and changing every part of our lives, but are there consequences to these changes? Nicholas Carr questions if the Internet is helping people as much as it is believed to in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” With an increased reliance on the Internet, Carr has found patterns of shortened attention in himself and among others. Carr points out frightening changes occurring in human behavior and the workings of the brain that have now become evident in our society’s younger generation and could have devastating consequences.

Nicholas Carr's Atlantic Online article "Is Google Making Us Stupid," talks about how the utilization of the PC influences our point of view. Carr begins discussing his own particular experience as an author and how he felt like "something had been tinkering with his cerebrum, remapping his neural hardware and reinventing his memory". Since beginning to utilize the Internet his exploration strategies have changed. Carr said before he would drench himself in books, protracted articles and long extends of composition permitting his "brain to become involved with the story or the arguments"(July/August 2008, Atlantic Monthly). Today Carr has found that "his fixation floats away from the content after a few pages and he battles to get once again into the content". His reason is that since he has put in the previous ten years working internet, looking and surfing and composing substance for databases" his cerebrum hardware has changed. He shows that some of his kindred scholars have encountered the same sorts of changes in their perusing books and looking after fixation. Some of them said they don't read books as effortlessly on the grounds that their fixation and center has get to be shorter.

The article published by The Atlantic, titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? causes the reader to contemplate the effect that the internet really has on us. Technology is used daily by the grand majority of people, and we jumped into this lifestyle without researching the effects it would have on us. Until recently people have not thought twice about this, but now we mutiple people, including scientists, questioning the effects on the brain. One of the hypothesized problems caused by the internet are the inability to retain information. The reasoning behind this thought is we try to be quick about our reading, we do not like being inefficient, what we do is we skim. The writer found this to be true for himself as well as a couple of his friends

In his Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr contends that the overload of information is “chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation”(315). He admits with easy accessibility of information online, the process of research has became much simpler(Carr 315). Yet such benefit comes with a cost. Our brains are “rewired” as the cost of such convenience(Carr 316). As the result, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s...but it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking”(Carr 317). Carr argues the forming of such habits can prevent us from deep reading and thinking. In fact, he provides may evidences in the

What Nicholas Carr is saying in his essay “Is Google Making Us stupid?” is that when we depend on the internet, we tend to skim over long articles instead of taking our time reading the articles. When we skim over things we do not absorb as much information as we do when we take our time reading it. Part of the reason we skim over things that we read is that we get easily distracted and it makes it harder to concentrate. Depending on the internet has made it to where we do not use our brains as much to solve problems or think of new ideas. When you have access to the internet you depend on it for a lot of things and you do not use your brain as often to solve problems.

As the internet offers us the benefits of quick and easy knowledge, it is affecting the brain’s capacity to read longer articles and books. Carr starts Is Google Making Us Stupid with the closing scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave taking apart the memory circuits that control HAL, the artificial brain of the ship. Carr feels the time he spends online is rewiring his brain. He is no longer able to concentrate long enough to read more than a few paragraphs. Even though the internet is useful, it seems to be changing the way our brain takes in information. He feels as though this brain wants to take information in the same way the internet disperses it: in

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

In the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr published "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google). In this article Nicolas Carr argues that the internet is changing how one thinks, and how it is causing a bad effect on one’s brain. I have to disagree. Although the internet is constantly changing, it helps in a positive way. Firstly, google has become a great resource for educational purposes. Secondly, the internet has become a great resource for intercultural experiences. Due to the general population spending most of their time on computer’s and smart phones, this information is accessible to us whenever needed.