Summary: Is The Internet Really Changing The Way We Think?

Nicholas Carr, posed the question, “Is Google making us stupid”, and asks his readers to give it some thought. The article made suggestions such as the internet changing the way the mind works and that the internet has negative consequences on the human brain. Carr wants everyone to be cautious of the internet because of the many different ways it has affected and will continue to affect the way we think. When I think about this article, I can see the many different tactics Carr used, such as fact vs fiction, cause and effect, and the clearly stated argument.

In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he claims that the Internet is changing the way our minds work, and that it has negative consequences on the mind. He informs his intended audience of frequent Internet users, that even as a writer, his mind struggles to keep focused on a book. The reason for this occurrence, he theorizes, is due to advancing technologies that have poisoned his mind. His text is primarily organized by discussing the topic of whether or not the Internet is making its users stupid and then supporting it with

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.

From his own experience, Carr said “My mind isn’t going - so far I can tell”, “I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”. As a writer but it feels like he cannot read thoroughly a whole piece of paper, keep “skimming” and “bounce” from pages to pages, from this site to another. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore”, said Bruce Friedman “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four pages is too much to absorb. I skim it.”. Another example from Friedrich Nietzsche while his friend noticed that his writing style has changed since he bought a typewriter, Nietzsche give an idea that the writing tools we use can effect our thoughts. I think it does, I like the scent and the feeling of touching pages, flipping over to read carefully, but now I just rolling the mouse on and on.as a result, traditional media have to changed to catching up with the new trend “Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, magazines and newspaper shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse

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

He exemplifies logos, through the research study conducted by scholars from University of College London, found that people using two popular research sites “exhibited a form of skimming activity”. It contends that “users are not reading online in the traditional sense: indeed there are signs that new forms of reading are emerging as users power browse horizontally through titles, contents pages for quick wins”. He makes it a point that individuals tend to embody the technology they use. This is strengthened by Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, who noted that his writing became terser and more telegraphic when he began using a typewriter. Carr also noted how humans methodically adapted to the invention of the clock by obeying the clock rather than listening to their innate senses. To further demonstrate and strengthen his argument that shorter attention are indication of the shorter texts that people read, he details a quote from Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist, which says

As I read the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicolas Carr, I cannot help but see the influence of how internet use can affect your thinking ability and create a negative effect on how think. We can use the internet for all sorts of resources in our daily lives but, the problem is that nobody puts the work in anymore and is finding the fastest way to get the “A,” while not grasping the concept resulting in them not being knowledgeable in their field of work. By them just skimming instead of understanding, they are not fully learning. For example, many of us can look at something and not remember what it was that we looked at the following day. This paper will be discussing the pros and cons of Nicolas Carr’s thoughts on Google, and how the search engine turned GPS, email, and so on is affecting the brains of today.

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.

In the Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr discusses the changes in a human’s thinking style and concentration ability that have occurred since they start depending on the internet for information. The author begins describing the new struggle that he is facing with reading lengthy texts. He indicates that this change is caused from spending a long time on the internet. Carr noted that this universal medium does not only provide endless benefits for the public, but also shapes the process of their thoughts. The internet is affecting human cognition; therefore, controls their brains, causes lack of capacity to concentrate, and disengages their ability to read, absorb, and interpret articles. The author is not the only

In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published July 2008 in The Atlantic, he discusses the changes that have taken place in past years since people have started relying more and more on the internet for information. His main claim is that the internet has affected the way that we process information. Consequentially, making us lazier and less focused on what we are doing. His main frustration is that he can no longer read a few paragraphs without being distracted.

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 sparked a new age of technology that may change the way our brains work. In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr discusses his concern about the internet’s effects on our intelligence. He was once an avid reader, much like many of his colleagues, yet many of them can no longer dive into a thick novel. The power of Google has prevailed in terms of efficiently gaining information, so they all became fonder of scanning than in-depth reading. Carr even provides experimental evidence that people who are browsing the web tend to only stay on the same page for a short amount of time and rarely go back to it. This is unlike the way he used to spend weeks deciphering long texts. He acknowledges that this new type of reading is a larger part of our lives than any other form of communication that came before the internet, and that our brains will reprogram in order to take on these new qualities. He also notices that the systematic efficiency we created through industrialization is prominent in the Google search engine, and fears this could one day be implemented into our thought process, ending the ambiguity that results from our curiosities. The internet, and the massive amounts of readily available information that comes with it, can actually transform the way we think and perceive information, but it should be something we embrace, because we can utilize it to enhance society.

According to the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the Internet is beginning to change how people’s brains work. He states that reading articles online can remap how the brain functions. It has become harder for people to read a lengthier article due the brain’s capacity of obtaining the information. Minds begin to drift away after reading only a couple of pages and some people would not even bother to read a long article. The reasoning for all of this is that the media, including the Internet, is giving them all the answers that they need. Due to this, people are relying more on the Internet to obtain their information instead of their intelligence. Nickolas Carr argues in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that the ability to focus and understand is being reduced by the Internet.

The author talks about the changes in his own life, how his way of thinking is changing due to the Internet. He loses his concentration while reading a book and he starts to look for something else to do because of this focusing problem. According to the author, he is not the only one who has this strange problem and he gives some real stories as examples and he continues with some quotes from his colleagues. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, and Bruce Friedman who blogs regularly about the use of

Throughout the book The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, he explains the history of mankind and their evolution of communications. As time progressed, humans’ forms of communication advanced from pictures and hieroglyphics to spoken language to written language. As we created a form of written language, Johannes Gutenberg was able to invent the world’s first printing press. After this invention, written pieces of information became able to be printed onto paper and bonded together to form a book. Once books began being made, it allowed readers to begin reading in depth and start to understand the concept that the book’s author is trying to convey. But when the internet was developed, it had taken a toll on individuals’ capability of storing long term memory and made humans into people who are constantly distracted by the internet, lacking attentiveness and focus. The internet and the way we chose to make use of it made us into “shallow” people.