Is Google Making Us Stupider?

As time progresses in our technologically propelled era and the internet continues to provide as the largest network source of information, our intellectual perception of information takes on a more distinctive and less analytical approach than before. The use of the internet has seized control over the vast connection of neural pathways in our minds, influencing our experiences and essentially hindering our natural ability to apply cognitive thinking.

The debate over the internet's influence on human minds has been long running. Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" article successfully defends both opinions on this issue. He has plenty of history on the topic and has seen much success in previous works. Carr uses his past to impact the present issue society is challenged with every day. With his background on the subject, Carr is able to establish credibility as a speaker before he reasons for both sides of the debate successfully.

Nicholas Carr stated a couple true statements, but I disagree that google is making us stupid. In the article, Carr explained how reading has drastically increased throughout the years. He is indeed correct about this. During this generation, people rely on the internet to provide accurate essential facts, which one can gain valuable knowledge from. Those who skim through articles or never read a book due to losing concentration after reading three pages are not lacking intelligence, but lack ambition and motivation.

For almost two decades, Google has surely been the top dog of search engines on the worldwide internet. Beginning as a research project by two college students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, called Backrub, Google has now become the answer to all questions. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. According to Niholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he states that our use of the internet has serious effects on the way we real, think, and live. Carr’s struggle along with his friends who he’s said are experiencing these same struggles, seem to be putting the blame on the internet for their lack of attentiveness, when there can be other underlying issues other than excessive use of the web affecting your brain.

Nicholas Carr, in his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," questions whether or not Google is benefitting society or destroying the ability of people to concentrate and think for themselves. In this day and age, Google is a lifeline, and it can be argued that without it, society would fall apart. Carr gives Google adequate credit for its positive benefits and revolutionary developments in the recent years, but he also points out how it may also be detrimental to this generation and future generations to come.

Nicholas Carr, the author of the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” illustrates various ways that the internet is negatively affecting our brains. He explains how people are growing dependent on technology every day, and he claims that the internet is a resource that can be used for anything, including reading and learning. According to Carr, the internet distracts people from the real world and it is a waste of time. He writes that the media is a shortcut to information and it is making people get used to having information quickly and conveniently. The author states that Google and the internet are trying to replace our brains with an artificial brain that can be faster in some contexts. Moreover, Carr’s article sparked debate for others to research the topic, thus creating an ongoing debate whether we are weakening our brain when it comes to internet searches. Overall, Google and the internet in general are, for the most part, helpful with the information they offer, the communication they make possible, and the virtually limitless technology they provide.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 page, it has turned to more of a skimming method. Nicholas Carr realizes that we may be doing more reading than ever due to the internet, but it is different in the way that people have to interpret the text. Reading, unlike talking, is not a natural ability. One must learn to deep read, make connections, and translate the underlying meaning. Overall, Carr believes it is a mistake to rely fully on computers because in the end, it will just be our own intelligence that morphs into artificial intelligence.

Nicholas Carr in the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that the more people use technology, the more it’s making people stupid. Throughout the article he mentions many examples where he proves himself correct. Google is making us stupid because it’s affecting our concentration the more we rely on technology.

Google gives you a direct answer to the question in which you asked. Being provided information from an online source such as Google doesn’t make you smarter in any shape or form. Before Google and other search engines, an individual had to read books and do an immense amount of research to come upon a legitimate answer. In that process you were exposed to all kinds of other ideas, which while they may not be relevant to the answer you were looking for, made you smarter for knowing them. When future questions come up, often times you would know the answer because you came across it in from various readings in the past. Researching topics on Google may be useful but is very time consuming at the same time. An individual could go to his or her

People are adapting, and changing their approach of how they seek knowledge: From hours, and hours of researching in the library to find information, to a five-second research on the internet with a click of a button? In an ever-changing world, humans are evolving with the ease of technology. The google search engine allows the users to search anything with the tip of their fingers. The World Wide Web has billions of website with information. People can search anything they want to know about. The innovation of the Google search engine surpassed its competitors because of its sophisticated algorithm. Is the Google search engine changing the way we think? Some people believe Google is making people stupid because