Analysis Of Is Google Making USupid By Nicholas Carr

In his article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Nicholas Carr contends that the consumption of information through the Internet has made people dim-witted due to poor concentration and comprehension. Carr starts his article by specifying the scene of Dave disassembling HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Carr builds up himself as a dependable storyteller by showing himself as an abstract master who knows about well-known culture and can associate famous media to his contentions. To the reader, this makes Carr seem less disconnected from his general audience when he continues to discuss the negative effect of the Internet on interpretation and focus on the remains of the article. Carr seems more like a well-versed expert who altogether

Carr addresses literary scholars, bibliophiles, and those with an intense familiarity with the arts, as we see with his Stanley Kubrick references. He mentions other academics like Maryanne Wolf, who one may not know unless they’re a literary expert, and Wolf’s novel Proust and the Squid, which would also be unfamiliar to a general audience. By mentioning Wolf’s study on the way humans read and the flexibility of the cerebrum, Carr persuades the audience to believe that he sees them as himself, a “literary type”. Carr also convinces the audience that he is even more knowledgeable by simply mentioning Wolf. Carr does this several more times throughout the article as he contends to his argument. Another example would be his reference to Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford, a 1934 book describing the history of technology and its role in shaping human

In the article, it is one if the main objectives in Carr’s argument that our excessive use of the internet has weakened attention spans. He uses the testimony of Scott Karp, a blogger, as evidence. Karp says that before he became a blogger he studied literature in college and read a lot. After starting his blog, he began using the web excessively. Karp says now he can’t pay attention long enough to read and so he just doesn't read at all any more. Karp also says that it’s not just that he’s seeking convenience but that his thought process has been altered by this change. Like in the article he uses to support his case, he agrees how people, like himself, lose focus rather quickly when reading on the web, and it is causing people to lose focus when looking at physical readings. Another example of logos that Carr when the writer, Maryanne Wolf, describes how due to texting and cell phones we are experiencing a different type of reading today than in the 1960’s and 70’s; a type of reading that “may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading”. This is useful in the sense that it is evidence is aimed towards a different younger