Summary One Nicholas Carr in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” states that the internet is causing deficiencies in reading and has caused people to have brief attention spans while reading a book. Carr immediately goes into explanation on how he can no longer sit to read without becoming “fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.” Carr then uses the rhetorical device of ethos by using creditable sources to back his claim. He uses a claim from scholars at University College London that stated, “It is clear that users are not reading online in traditional sense,” therefore stating people are skimming and scanning for information.
Everyone has a different view of technology and the internet, and how or if it is affecting us as people. In Nicolas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” he offers his views on the subject. He expresses his concerns about what humans excessive internet use could be doing to the actual functioning of their brains. Lauren Brown and Kay Sanborn, both have their own ideas on the subject some of which agree with Carr and others that disagree. I believe that the internet and technology have their pros and cons and whether we see both views or just one is up to us.
In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the author suggests that modern technology is changing the way him and other people think. He argues that, in the past, it was much easier to engage in long readings. Now, he claims, reading is more challenging and people are more likely to skim a passage rather than fully absorb the information due to excessive use of the internet (313-314). Carr uses Friedrich Nietzsche’s relationship with his typewriter as an example to express that with every new technology, he warns, the human mind is vulnerable to a change in structure (319). Carr observes and suggests that the more people use and rely on computers, the more the human mind essentially becomes a form of artificial intelligence
Nicholas Carr claims his opinion on how computer and internet changed people’s way of thinking and going to turn people into machines in the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. He states current situation that we are in a Internet era and his mind is not going like before when we focused on deep reading. First of all, the new universal medium Net reshape our process of thought, from concentrating on one reading to skimming readings. Although we read more, we did not completely understand it and made a rich mental connection with it. He talks about how Google’s value contradict people’s healthy growth.
In the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” by Nicholas Carr, he explores the idea that new technology is changing the way we approach literature. Not only has the approach changed, but also the way we process the information, or at what length. Information is available and compact in today's society, this is changing our thinking; therefore our reading patterns has altered. We are becoming as the essay refers to as “Pancake people.” Society can be spread wide in the things they know, but are thin in the quantity of one specific area.
In his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr argues that our dependence on the Internet changes the way we read and think. He includes his own personal testimony to support this claim, as well as others’ descriptions, including several friends, and bloggers that Carr quote. While he lacks scientific proof supporting his claim, multiple testimonies support his claim that the internet has changed the way people think. However, Carr views this negatively, saying that “I’m not thinking the way I used to think… my concentration often starts to drift… I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text” (633-634).
Harvard Writer, Nicholas Carr, in his Advocacy article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Describes the altering effects of the internet and search engines on our brains. Carr´s purpose is to get the reader aware of the impact the internet has on our everyday life. He adopts a informative tone in order to appeal emotionally and logically to his audience. Carr begins his advocacy for the internet by acknowledging that in ¨A Space Odyssey¨ when they rely too much on Artificial Intelligence it could get a human killed, in this example the supercomputer HAL almost drifted astronaut Dave Bowman into a deep space death by the malfunctioning machine; Showing that the astronaut is superior than a machine. He appeals to the emotion of sadness by admitting that “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something has been tinkering with my brain” he is “not thinking the way i used to.”
Shawntae Aikens Technology has a found a way into our lives where we use it everyday, and some have come to the point where they depend on it. People have become concerned that the Internet is becoming a distraction and has taken over our lives. The Internet, and social media has become very addicting our smartphones have given us the chance to have the internet and social media at our hands at all times. Nicholas Carr, a writer for the Atlantic Online, wrote the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Within his article he discusses his opinion on how the internet is something that is not helping us at all.
In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicholas Carr expresses his view on technology. He touches on ideas about how technology has evolved and how it changes how humans view the world. He makes the points that technology is widely accessible and frequently used. Carr shows how technology changed the style of earlier writers’ pieces. Carr believes that how the earlier writers wrote contributed to the style of their works.
In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr he clearly states, “I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory” (Carr). This quote suggests that the author feels the effects of the Internet just as everyone else has. Most people would agree that use of the Internet is a daily task yet few can deal with life without the Internet. The Net has made life easier but as Carr suggest it is my contention that it is changing the way people think thus making us “stupid”.
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.
Technology is everywhere in today’s world and it is rapidly evolving. As technology evolves, so does the society using it. Technology is negatively affecting the way we read, write, and live. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr focuses on how the introduction of newer ease of access technologies has changed the way we read, write, and even think. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr discusses the remapping of people’s brains upon the release of new technologies.
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr feels that over past few years there’s been a change in the way he thinks. Carr observes that there is something that is changing his memory and restructuring his brain’s way of thinking. Carr suggests that research that would require hours in library going through bundles of text has now ended up in few searches on google, which has degraded the power of contemplation and concentration in a human brain. Carr points out that he is not the only one with this reading problem he has other acquaintances that have similar problem of focusing on large pieces of writing.
Reading is harder, focusing is difficult, books are a thing of the past. In an intriguing article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” Nicolas Carr explains how the internet is affecting people’s cognitive ability to function. Since the creation of the internet, information has become more readily available, but at the cost of the human brains cognitive ability. Carr states that artificial technologies have an effect on the brains cognitive ability because its causing us to change our habits for the artificial technology. He writes about Friedrich Nietzsche a writer “[who’s] vision was failing, [who couldn’t keep] his eyes focused on a page [without it] becom[ing] exhausting and painful” (Carr 3).
The Influence of Technology In the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that utilization of the internet has an adverse effect on our way of thinking and functioning in everyday life. Whether it be reading a newspaper, or scrolling through Facebook, internet media has forever stamped its name in our existence. Carr explains to us that the internet is a tool used every single day in today’s society, but also makes most of us complacent with the ease of having the world at our fingertips.
