In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicolas Carr analyzes the dramatic affects that technologies have been having on our brains. The short summary, the Net is making us all mindless zombies in Carr’s mind, but he is not the only who feels that way. His long dragged out article is abundantly full of meaning examples, personal opinions, and hard facts on the drastic changes the Net has done to our brains. Carr starts his articles with the death of super computer, HAL, from the movie A Space Odyssey.
Nicholas Carr is a writer who writes in these kind of field: technology, business, and culture. Carr wrote this essay called, “Is Google Making us Stupid”; Carr fully explains how internet changes people’s thinking, a way of reading, and knowledge with rhetoric strategies. For logos, Carr thoroughly supports his arguments with great supporting points from credit sources. He explains how the internet affects us in reading. For pathos, he points out that human’s brain would work differently since we are using the internet widely comparing to the generation, whom lives without the internet.
In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” by Nicholas Carr, Carr claims that the internet changes how we think as humans and as a society. His claim comes from his observation that he was losing his capacity to read large amounts of text, after having been spoiled by the immediate nature of the internet. Though he seems to believe that the internet will negatively impact society, it is unclear what his intentions are. Whether he is trying to persuade us that the internet is negative or whether he is just trying to get us to think about the effects of the internet, Carr utilizes literary devices such as rhetorical appeals--ethos, logos, and pathos--and procatalepsis in his argument to effectively critique the internet. Carr starts off
Time is advancing swiftly with technology as its sidekick on sweeping the way people think. In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Carr discusses that as great as it is that society takes advantage of every technological innovation, allowing it to consume their way of living as it lacks the authenticity of personal and intellectual growth. Ultimately, society is in an unhealthy relationship with technology as technology brings forth its many conveniences, where society hops onto anything that will make life a bit easier, yet this harms society into losing their track of enjoying life and its trudges. Society focuses more on reaching a result quickly and efficiently, rather than enduring the progression towards that goal. Nicholas Carr beautifully scripts how technology leads to a more distracted person as productivity is more important than enjoying life’s wonders.
Nicholas Carr’s article titled Is Google Making us Stupid was written to deliver an urgent message to the reader. Carr’s purpose for writing this article was to inform the masses of the potential dangers in how new technologies change the ways our minds work. He is trying to warn us how writing has reduced our capability to remember details in our heads, just like the internet has been able to change the way our brains store, acquire, and handle information. The author makes the argument that Carr makes a reference to the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey. In his reference he tells the reader about the HAL computer who uncannily perfectly expresses human emotion, as it shares its concern that its data banks and artificial brain is being shut down
In the article, A Qualitative Inquiry into the Contextualized Parental Mediation Practices of Young Children’s Digital Media Use at Home explains as children grow up it has become much easier to access the internet without parents watching. With the daily use of the web, it's become a problem for parents to interact with their children. Some people would rather be browsing throughout the internet then have a conversation face to face. The development of the brain increases throughout our life and every information we put in gets processed into the brain. Throughout the last few decades, the use of technology has increased dramatically, and if children and adults expose themselves to many hours on the internet and don’t exercise brain muscles it can weaken the brains development.
1. Nicholas Carr’s argument in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” challenges Thompson’s argument which was that the internet is making people smarter by helping people improve their writing skills when they read other people’s work online. However, Carr believes with so much information available, the internet had changed our “mental habits” in a negative way. The internet has people using “ a form of skimming activity” which decreases how much people read to “no more than one or two pages of an article or book” (Carr 2) before they change to different site. Carr complicates Boyd’s view on how algorithms are filtering what people see on their screen and those who are not digitally literate would be clueless of this.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr observes that people are beginning to have trouble reading for long periods of time. Carr explains that he is beginning to wonder what the internet is doing to our brains and he states that even he does not think the way that he used to. The author explains that he is also having trouble reading because he has begun to lose his concentration while reading long books or articles.
In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr is saying that when the internet becomes our primary source of information, it negatively affects our reading ability and our attention span. Using Google and the internet dulls our brain’s experience in the learning process and makes it hard to focus on reading. Carr gives a researched account on how using the internet is supposed to be fast and rewarding to the user. He explains that we go on the internet because it is easier and less time consuming than using something like a book or a magazine. Carr exclaims that we now use the internet as our main source for information.
In his essay, Carr mentions his ideas on how our minds are practically stripped of all its typical mental functions and responsibilities, due to the takeover of the internet on our minds. Carr states, “The internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV” (320). The multiple capabilities and resources the internet provides us with are assuming positions that would naturally be held by our minds, therefore taking control over almost all of our mental processes. Without the need to compute thoughts and create ideas, our minds are not being used to the extent in which they truly need to grow in strength and intelligence.
Technological advancements are capable of filling people with hope but fear as well. Nicholas Carr has written an intriguing article titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” which discusses how technology is changing the way we as humans think. Carr believes that technology is changing us negatively by shortening our attention span and preventing in depth thought and study. Through his article, Carr effectively demonstrates the manner in which technology is negatively impacting the way we think. One effective point Carr uses in his argument is fueled by historical evidence.
In The Atlantic “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr notifies us on the ways that technology is effecting our brains in a negative way. This article starts off by talking about the internet and how it is and can be the source for almost anything. That being said, we are becoming defenseless on technology in things like work, reading, and writing. This article demands that this technology is a very big disturbance in our lives. We practically live off of this technology and commonly this media has to live up to the expectations, which us, as the audience have everything handed to us.
Carr believes that this use of the prominent use of the internet is clearly changing the way that human’s think. In contrast, others may believe that his argument
Carr believes that we depend on the Internet more than just looking up the answers in the book ourselves. He is trying to prove that our generation is consumed by the Internet. In addition to this, I feel his argument is effective because he builds credibility with personal facts, using statistics, and making emotional appeals throughout the essay. He gives many details and examples to backup and support his argument. Nicholas Carr gives himself credibility by stating that he knows what’s going on in his own mind, this is where he is uses ethos.
He starts his argument by telling us the effect the internet has had on him and others he has come across. The internet has changed his train of thought and his ability to focus and concentrate. He believes our brains have been reprogramed over time to adjust to the speed and convenience of the internet. Our ability to retain and digest traditional media has also been compromised since we are used to receiving information so rapidly. This is a strong opening argument for his essay.
