In “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain,” by Nicholas Carr, Carr discusses that people who use the web appear to struggle and have to challenge themselves twice as much to stay focused on long pieces of writing. In the reading, Carr says that he has a major problem being focused on a long text. He realized how the internet had detrimental effects on our brains and conflicted with our reading concentration. He mentions that reading a full text is almost impossible because our concentration drifts away. People are getting used to reading online and now expect to have everything introduced as a short analysis. In the excerpt essay, according to Nicholas Carr, using the internet for reading and researching may affect …show more content…
When people want to do a research or complete reading a book it is impossible for them to accomplish that goal because their mind is focus on many things. Among other things, In another study scholars from the University College London did an experiment to see how things work on the internet and how it affects us. They examined computer logs to see how people would use the internet and record the behavior of visitors. People that access journals, articles, e-books, and any other written source were being tracked down to see how they managed their time using it (Carr 595). It turned out that people were skimming or bouncing around different pages (Carr 595). To illustrate, when I use my laptop to do online work I am always tempted to open a new tab and search for something new. When I have to do work for any of my class, I do not like seeing one-tab open, so I need to open new ones and search random things. The first tab is my homework, the second tab is Youtube, and a third tab would be Twitter. I like having all the tabs I use open so I can hop around different tabs and read or listen to multiple things at the same time. I’m not able to focus on one thing because I do different type of work at once like he mentioned people go “online and try to avoid reading the traditional way” (Carr
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.
not so much because the way I read has changed… but because the way I think has changed.” (Carr, 557 & 558) Nicholas also uses Bruce Friedman, another blogger, as an example. Bruce makes a statement “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a long article on the Web or in print.” (Carr, 558) Bruce can no longer read a blog that is more than three or four paragraphs because it is too much to absorb so he decides just to skim it. (Carr, 558) With these examples in mind, it shows that many people understand the depth of this problem because the internet is affecting people worldwide, especially
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr expresses his idea that, due to mankind’s constant use of the internet, people are losing their ability to read long pieces of literature. He says the internet may offer a faster answer to a question one might have, but the experience of actually having to research a topic for days at a time lessens the actual knowledge that is gained. Carr speaks of his own way of thinking being changed as his use of the internet became greater. He also states that he is not the only one being effected; offering up instances where his friends’ thought processing has also begun to dwindle for their constant use of the internet. Carr even references how Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing changed after he began to use
While reading this writing, it’s necessary to also factor in all of the useful deeds the Internet can serve. I believe Carr knows this as well, remaining practical while recognizing how useful the Internet and search engines can be. Stepping out of my own shoes, from an author’s point of view, I can see how the internet could hinder the strong and unique opinions of writing topics. I could see where seeing repetitive subjects and headlines would get old to see across the
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in The Atlantic on July 2008, American writer Nicholas Carr comes to the realization that the constant usage of the internet is changing how the average person reads and remembers. Carr says: “The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes”. Nicholas Carr believes that the internet is a valuable tool, but there are concerns based on how it is used. The author thinks that this can be seen in the fact that people are more likely to skim an article to try and get the information wanted, causing an easy and lazy way of achieving the wanted information.
Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.” (52) After giving his opinion, he talks about how his friends agreed with his way of not being able to fully focus because of the internet. Carr also tells us about how several types of online passages have changed over the years he said that newspapers and magazines have added “capsule summaries”. (Carr 57). Carr shows a study that was done by researchers at the University College London, on how people skimmed pages and move from one topic to the next based on distraction.
In the article, it is one if the main objectives in Carr’s argument that our excessive use of the internet has weakened attention spans. He uses the testimony of Scott Karp, a blogger, as evidence. Karp says that before he became a blogger he studied literature in college and read a lot. After starting his blog, he began using the web excessively. Karp says now he can’t pay attention long enough to read and so he just doesn't read at all any more.
Additionally, multiple students and people alike would rather read a summary of a book than read the whole book. Reading books as a whole is important for brain and language development. Reading a shortcut version of a book will not give the reader valuable information and influential life lessons. Technology can disrupt the mind from the wonders of reading by desensitizing and being found more significant than
The internet influences the human mind and Nicholas Carr delves into the reasons in Is Google Making Us Stupid? In this article Carr examines the internet’s influential possibilities. The internet is changing people psychologically but it is not negatively impacting, it is merely an evolution for society. Carr provides well-thought input, spanning from humanity’s psychological alterations to comparisons of historical inventions. SUMMARY
In the online essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he explains in his writing to the audience that Google is taking away his reading from where he used to be able to read for hours. Now he can’t read for more than a couple of pages because of the distraction of the Internet. The quote I took from the essay was, “I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing”.
According to this statement the readers can conclude that the main reason for reading concentration disturbance is the internet. In terms of the scientific research, the article provides the research by the British Library and U.K educational consortium which states “They found that people using the sites exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another rarely returning to any source they’d already visitied” (Carr, 2008). From this statement we can understand that there are numbers of attractive information piled on one page, people have a hard time choosing which one to read, resulting them to skim and jump to one another. From these couple examples, it can be concluded that the author of this essay is strongly attempting to convince the readers in his idea of internet disturbing people’s concentration. However, the essay itself is extremely biased, because of the fact that there is no information about benefits of using the internet and reading online.
Online reading has overcome physical boundaries. Key words: Online reading, electronic devices, Internet, reading habits 1. Introduction The World Wide Web and Internet is redefining today reading habits. Internet is widely used as way for creating, generating, constructing and disseminating information.
In chapter 5 “A Medium of the Most General Nature,” the author illustrates the recent phenomena that the time of reading print materials for people to spend is decreasing as Net use grows. People are devoting less time to read the print texts (Carr 87). More people turn to reading online to obtain the instant information or academic knowledge. It seems like a popular lifestyle in people’s life to reading online instead of reading the printed material.
“The more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing,” (Carr), is what one author wrote, and I agree with this statement. Technology and especially social media have conditioned us to be accustomed to short texts, for example, twitter, which has a 120-character max. Once one has adapted to this, indeed they would find difficulty in reading novels or academic papers. Also, “users are not reading online in the traditional sense, indeed there are new forms of reading emerging as users power browse,” (Baron) meaning that rather than thoroughly reading texts, readers are only skimming them, looking for the main points. By doing this, they may miss crucial words or ideas.
Casual reading in America is dying and the rise of electronic media is the one being put to blame. Research shows that people today are not reading as much literature in their spare time as they were back in the 1980s. Because of this, it is believed that Americans are becoming less informed, and less active socially. Electronic media is here to stay, and the amount of time spent on it will only increase. Although electronic media may be at fault for the decline of reading, it is a powerful tool that can outweigh the drawbacks of not reading the traditional way.