Summary Of Is Google Making USupid

Caleigh McCray

ENGL 2367

Mr. Canter

22 Jan. 2015

Is Google Making Us Stupid? ‘Is Google Making us stupid?’ by Nicholas Carr is an essay from the Norton Reader. The author speaks of new age technology and how it is effecting our reading skills and the way we read. Reading is not a natural instinct in humans, it is something we must practice and keep up on. The author says he feels as if his own mind is changing, and he feels it when he reads. Although he appreciates the internet he does feel as if all these shortened articles and short-cuts to information have changed the way people intake information and preform at reading. From reading all these internet articles, some people feel that reading a traditional text just isn’t the same anymore, he feels distracted and bored. The author has a strong argument; we live in an instant, lazy generation. People today prefer to read quick articles on the internet rather than flipping through a paper or text book and most don’t understand that this is all actually changing the way we intake information.

Today, simple research is instant on sites such as ‘Google’ and ‘Bing’, just two of the many search engines. The author tells of others who are having this same problem consentrating while reading a traditional texts, like Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. He wrote earlier this year, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,”. Carr also speaks of Scott Karp, another blogger on the subject of social media who says he has stopped reading books altogether, when he himself used to love reading books. Karp is quotes saying he has no clue what happened, and the way he thinks must have