Is Google Making USupid By Nicholas Carr Summary

Intro:

Humanity is in the middle of a technology revolution and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Now, more than ever, we communicate across the globe easily. The world is evolving and so are our minds. Nicholas Carr wrote an article for “The Atlantic” discussing the disadvantages of the internet in the modern day academic community. I agree with Carr saying that the internet is changing our minds but unlike Carr, I think our minds are changing for the better and the internet changing what it means to be smart.

In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr describes the type of reading that we used to do. Lengthy, all-day, immerse yourself into a whole other world, has gone away, according to Nicholas Carr. Instead, we skim

Carr’s friends feel the same way, stating,”...even a blog post of more than three to four paragraphs is too much to absorb, I skim it.” The internet has created a style of reading that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above engaging with a text. Carr reflects on historical advances like the clock and the printing press, stating how they “brought into being the scientific mind and the scientific man,” but it also took away our basic human instincts. The internet has quickly become our source for everything; map, clock, printer, calculator, phone, radio, and television. It has absorbed all the modern technology and has scattered our attention and concentration and taken our thoughts for their own. The internet is an ever changing beast. Adapting to the needs of the audience. Shortened articles, hyperlinks, pop-up ads, and shorts cut have made their way into every screen we look at without looking into its questionable ethics. Carr recalls an experiment conducted by Frederick Winslow Taylor where he set a new precedent for productivity in factories. By studying time and performance, Taylor did create a system that defined the industrial revolution. Carr implies this is what the internet is doing to us.

Carr states, “And what the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” (Carr, 4) Humanity’s collective intelligence and ability for concentration and contemplation is at the highest it's ever been. The flaw in Carr’s thesis is due to contradiction. If every new advance we have made as a society was a detriment to our minds, we would be going backwards instead of forwards. If every advance from cave paintings to the iPhone x hindered us in any way then we would have never made it to space or created the steam engine. The web wasn’t created out of thin air. Everything that you can find was created by somebody. The internet is a direct representation of all the intelligence that we