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. He believes the internet is causing our brains to become reorganized and nt store as much as it use to because we rely on the internet
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Within Carr’s article he discusses how he feels the internet is dumbing us down. He states “once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy in a jet ski” (Carr 2). Within this statement Carr is saying that he use to have the ability to read longer books and actually dig within the books and explore, and understand the deeper meaning. Now that he has gotten use to the internet it’s harder to focus on what he’s looking for while searching the internet. Many ads pop up for different things, and instead of actually reading a full article we simply skim through short bits of articles and create something out of what we have read. Carr helps point out that “The internet has altered [our] mental habit.’ ‘I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article in the web or in print” (Carr 2). We often lose our train of thought in the internet due to all the distractions the internet brings. We have different tabs; where we can jump from site to site. We have access to sites which allow us to watch movies likes, Netflix and Hulu. Which give us a reason to want to want to watch more, then we’ll go do homework or read the readings for tonight. Over time it has also become harder to contain information from the internet, it used to be easier to contain from a book because it had to be thought about. You had to create your own
In Nicholas Carr’s writing, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” mentions multiple examples of why the internet and the simplicity of looking up and getting exactly what we were looking for are causing a drop in the way we think and the intelligence of our minds. Carr explains that he was once a huge reader and could comprehend ten to fifteen-page articles easily, but the directness of the internet had dulled his brain that he could not read a few paragraphs before he gave up and his mind started drifting off into the emptiness of his brain. Carr mentions that the Net is being the universal medium causing information that is read and learned go in one ear and out the other. Carr defends his positions by adding multiple examples showing that the Net
In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr expresses his concern that the internet could be negatively affecting the way people think. He begins to argue his point by explaining his own issues of not being able to immerse himself in a book like he could before. Carr then reveals his suspicion that it’s the internet’s fault, and supports that by comparing his own experience to others. Reading is a common hobby for most of the people Carr compares experiences with. Like Carr, they found it difficult to read longer pieces of writing, and some blame the internet as well.
He also mentioned the knowledge we skimmed from is fake, not the real wisdom. Like typewriter changed our way of writing, the Internet will turn
(Carr, 557) Since he has been spending a lot of time on the web his attention span has decreased greatly. (Carr, 557)Research that took days to find can now be found within seconds. Nicholas thinks that his mind expects to take in information the way the net distributes it. (Carr, 557) The more you use the Web the harder it is to stay focused on what you’re reading.
Nicolas Carr writes in his essay ‘a few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after'. Mr. Carr is telling us know that we no longer have to go to a library, spend hours going through card catalogs, or haul piles of books to the table in order to search through thousands of pages of text to find the information we are in search of. Instead, we have places online like Google, Yahoo, and Bing which allow us to sit back and literally, at our fingertips, have any and all information humanly possible on the ready. The days of going through an index in an encyclopedia book, sitting in front of a card catalog, or microfiche are days of the past, extinct if you will. Mr. Carr also writes 'my mind now expects to take in information the way the
In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” written by Nicholas Carr, it talked about how Google and other technologies are changing the way we think and process information. This article starts out by talking about an instance where a person was almost killed by an artificial brain (Carr 731). The author talks about how over the years he believes that someone is changing his brain and the way that he thinks. The author gives examples of this by telling how he used to be able to read a long passage and keep attention to it but now he can’t keep focus for more than a few sentences (Carr 731).
They proposed the idea that people would be better off if they had a search engine connected or replaced with their brains, this is a notion of society’s brains being replaced with artificial intelligence. Aside from this unsettling notion, lets focus on how distracted society is, they are constantly being alerted of emails, app notifications, text messages, missed calls and the ever so important low battery alert. “The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow concentrated thought, it is in their economic interest to drive us to distraction”(Carr 291). That explains why internet users are constantly being bombarded by advertisements. When the brain deep reads it deep thinks, and the fact that even brilliant literature graduates are having a hard time concentrating on deep reading just proves the internet distractions are working in a negative
Thesis: The Internet, according to the author, is modifying the way that we read and take in knowledge through our senses. Carr recognized that he was losing his ability to read deeply into a text. When he sat down to read a short article, he caught himself skimming over the text. He became
Previous generations used encyclopedias or went to the library to gather information for schoolwork or any reports that needed written. Carr states “the faster we surf across the Web – the more links we click and pages we view – the more opportunities google and other companies gain to collect information about us and feed us advertisements” (Carr 325). Therefore, google is getting us to buy into its advertisements and spend money on products that we do not need. Carr also states, “it almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense” (Carr 317). With there being so many distractions on the Internet, people are not able to absorb the information they are reading.
For example he demonstrates to us the negative effect the internet has had on our skills when he says “ And what the net seems to be doings is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”(4). Both concentration and contemplation are crucial to a human being to be able to read at a high level and he feels like the internet is taking those skills away from him. Leaving him with the ability to read a piece of text at the pace of a turtle and in a super low level. However he doesn't feel the internet has only left us with deficits, but has given us some benefits like speed and efficiency giving us the ability to find something in a matter of seconds that once would have taken us days essentially gives us “Maximum speed, Maximum efficiency, and Maximum output”. He knows that the internet has been beneficial in some ways, as a writer the ability to save hours on on research is everything.
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.
In today’s day and age technology is the backbone of society. The article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” states, “The internet contains the world’s best writing, images, and ideas.” this shows that the internet has the majority of the information people use to learn. Since the majority of our information is
He traces how people are befooled as their intelligence is declining because of the internet and how there are changes in patterns of their behavior. He claims that we are losing our intellect while using the internet as our main source. Carr is trying to prove that the internet is going to shatter our minds
In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr tries to point out that as the internet becomes more of our primary source of information, Carr claims that the internet well affect how the human brain process information. In the article Carr tries to explain what he means by using a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL (the supercomputer) is being Disassembled but the man the machine nearly killed. Carr focuses his attention on the fact that the computer is starting to ‘feel’ its “brain” being taken away as the man takes his memory circuits. Nicholas then goes in to set this place into his theory to the reader.
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.