Google Making USupid Thesis

854 Words4 Pages

Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is a critical analysis of the Internet’s effects on our brains’ cognition. Carr explores the impacts that reading Internet text has on how we think and absorb information, citing personal examples and examples from public settings. In his article, Carr argues that the now commonplace practice of reading online has changed how our minds think and process information; Carr believes that the more we read online, the less we will be able to “deep read”, as one would with printed text. In Elizabeth Schmar-Dobler’s “Reading on the Internet: The link between literacy and technology”, Schmar-Dobler states that the nature of literacy is changing to include the type of reading strategies used to read both …show more content…

The author consistently cites the example of students who have grown up using the internet as an information gathering tool; She talks about how students today must be able to read and write for both the print and digital worlds, and that the “skills of reading and using technology converge as students search for information or answer questions with the Internet” (Schmar-Dobler 81). This convergence of skills is important when considering Schmar-Dobler’s earlier assertion about the nature of literacy itself changing. The author goes on to examine the model for reading comprehension, the proper strategies of which poor readers usually lack the knowledge of, and therefore tend to be thought of as a marker for identifying “strategic readers”. Strategic readers of the Internet, however, must add the skill of “navigating” in order to locate pertinent information and then take meaning from the text (Schmar-Dobler 83). Schmar-Dobler then claims that “To be adept at seeking, evaluating, and using information found on the Internet, readers must navigate through Internet text and apply their knowledge of the reading process” (Schmar-Dobler 83). This application of the reading process should allow the reader to “deep read” when necessary, letting the information be absorbed entirely and

Open Document