Google is a practical search engine, which provides endless information in a matter of seconds. Google's development occurred in September of 1997 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Mcfadden 2017). It developed into a popular research tool in light of it capacity to perform quickly and accurately. Nicholas Carr argues in his article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?,” the web has evolved to impact the way humans think and process information. “Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology” (Jacobs 2011). He received his masters in literature and language from Harvard University (Jacobs 2011). He claims humans’ physiological procedures are now adapted to a simple and immediate learning technique (3). Carr tries …show more content…
The provided research assist in convincing the audience. Carr provides data and statistics from several research studies to support his claims. The importance of facts attempts to make the essay seem valid and sound. Carr presented research from the University College London, which “found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited” (Carr 4). This analysis helps educate online users how online searching has affected their attention to detail. It encourages readers to believe their brain becomes manipulated. Carr goes ahead to back his points with the reasoning for Google. “Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does… it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it.” (Carr 4). The implement of Google’s motivation shows people this search engine conforms to specific interests of the user. Individuals invested in electronics may consider this evidence reliable and trustworthy. The logos strengthens the author’s overall message. It reinforces the asserted opinions and helps implement …show more content…
Logical fallacies are considered unsupportive and ineffective, but they are effective methods of persuasion. The fallacies do not negatively affect the author’s argument. Carr integrates evidence to back up his claims, but includes an appeal to false authority. He includes, “Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits” (Carr 3). This is an example of false authority, since Friedman is not an expert on the subject. People, of any age, can freely blog about various topics. It may not be an appropriate reasoning technique, but it does not hinder the argument. Also, the writing contains slippery slope fallacy. Carr’s anecdote regarding Friedrich Nietzsche's typewriter is a slippery slope. It gives the result of the situation and over exaggerates the cause. Carr states, “His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up” (5). Carr tries explaining how overuse of computers leads to physical and mental impairment. The descriptive symptoms of failing eyesight and painful headaches emphasizes the situation. However, Nietzsche’s problems could be caused by pre-existing circumstances. Slippery slope emotionally appeals to the
Andrea Schlesinger’s, “In Google We Trust” a chapter in her book The Death of Why? The issue is that the internet has changed people and that it may not be a good thing. Google has changed the way that people think greatly, especially in our ability to analyze, understand and know the source of the information we receive from google.
While his best arguments come from cultural criticism. Written text led to the decline of oral reading and television obliterated the radio. Every technology comes with it’s trade-offs, it just comes down to moderation. There is little doubt that the internet is changing our brain. What Carr neglects to mention, however, is how the internet can change our brain for the better. Computer games have the ability to improve cognitive tasks and increase visual attention. He doesn’t always address the good effects that the internet has had on the world. One of the better strategies Carr uses is switching his point of view from third to first person. He reflects on his personal life and how his life has changed in response to what he has learned. Carr shows how even he has his faults but, being aware of a problem is the first step to finding
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
Nicholas Carr gives a sense of unbiased in his work when he writes, “I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the database of the internet. The web has been a godsend to me as a writer” (394). Though this statement it is clear that he sees both sides of the argument and by demonstrating this to the author he strategically is appealing to ethos and supporting his own argument. In hopes of building credibility, he begins to write, “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. My mind isn’t going ─ so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think” (394). Granted that he writes this in the beginning of his essay he is trying to credit himself as a victim which helps him support his argument against the constant usage of the internet. Nicholas Carr is aware that without building credibility within his essay the audience will dismiss his points as uneducated and meaningless.
An author’s main focus when writing a nonfiction piece is to persuade its audience of their beliefs, using claims to support them. With the effect of close consideration of claims and fallacies when reading non-fiction, the author is unable to persuade the reader due to inaccurate statements made by the author himself. The fallacies detected by a close reader discredits the author as well as their piece.
In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” the reader finds all three methods of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos in emphasizing his point that Google is possibly making people stupid; but it is ultimately the people who cause their own mental deterioration. His persuasion is a reminder to people of the importance of falling back on the “traditional” ways of reading. He also understands that in skimming an article one has the ability to retain what is necessary. Carr himself points out that in the past he was better able to focus on what he read and retain the information. However, now he exercises the process of browsing and skimming over information, just as many individuals have come to do in this day and age.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
Anecdotes have become very influential in the forming of opinions. We often base our decisions off customer reviews or personal recommendations, rather than product labels or factual records. Though it is still important to cumulate and explore the proper avenues of information, it can be challenging to decipher between quantitative and qualitative data these days. Nicholas Carr finds an effective balance of anecdote and research in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He begins to illustrate his theory to the reader by starting off with a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where a supercomputer nearly kills a man. To accurately assess whether this connection is effectively executed, we must analyze the relationship between
If you find yourself skimming through pages, looking for bullet points and your mind wandering off, you might be suffering the effects of Google making you stupid. These are the things that Nicholas Carr talks about in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” was originally published in July 2008 in Atlantic magazine. Carr argues that the use of technology on the daily basis has made us unable to go into deeper thought about things. Along with the opinion of Scientists and other “literary types” he asserts that the web has indeed made us change the way we think. Power Browsing is the new way people are reading, this is where you look from title to title, surfing the web from link to link. Overall, he advocates that eventually our brains will
In composing “Is Google Making Us More Stupid” Nicholas Carr wants his audience to be feared by the internet while at the same time he wants his work to seem more creditable. Nicholas Carr uses many different types of evidence to show us that we should be scared and feared as well as his credibility. Carr’s audience is people who think like him, who find themselves getting lost on the internet while reading something, someone who is educated and uses the internet to look up the answers to questions or to read an article or book.
Nowadays people don’t bother sitting down and going through an article or book from page to page, because it’s not a good use of their time as they can get all information faster through the web. By examining the behaviors of computer users, both authors argue that people don’t really care about deep knowledge of what they are learning or reading. People want to know how things work or are connected in an instant. They feel that they don't need to critically think about the information to help get them along in life. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” supports this claim by citing a scientific study from the University College London were the researchers examined the behavior of visitors to a couple popular websites and found that people using the sites displayed skimming activity (41). The users of the sites did not bother taking the time to read the articles, but they instead power browsed, jumping from one site to the other and hardly returning to the websites they had already visited. In addition, the internet has made people accustomed to new reading styles that people don’t fully comprehend or absorb material. They read things for apparent meaning. Carr also says “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”
Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and Sherry Turkle’s “How Computers Change the Way We Think” both discuss the influence of technology to their own understanding and perspective. The first work by Nicholas Carr is about the impact technology has on his mind. He is skeptical about the effect it could cause in the long term of it. He gives credible facts and studies done to prove his point. While Sherry Turkle’s work gives a broad idea of the impact of technology has caused through the years. She talks about the advances in technology and how it is changing how people communicate, learn and think. In both works “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” the authors present
In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr disputes that due to new digital tools, peoples’ ability to retain and acquire information has been negatively altered. Even though, we have information at our fingertips, we often don’t take the time to soak in all the information. Carr mentions Bruce Friedman, a blogger, who finds it extremely difficult to read a “longish article on the web” and to try to focus on the importance of the text holistically (Carr 316). This is an issue that many can relate even Carr knows that, “ the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr 314). Additionally, media theorist Mcluhan describes the net as “chipping away [mental] capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 315). In essences, Carr states that we are having less of an attention span and consequently, less patience for longer articles (Carr 314). Therefore, this affects media outlets such as magazines, newspapers, and other articles, because they must conform and shorten their texts to fit the status quo that people safely enjoy (Carr 321). In addition, the net forces people to be efficient, and so, causes people to “weaken [their] capacity for deep reading” (Carr 317). People are becoming more driven on how quick he or she has to do something rather than think why this text is important. As a consequence, Carr believes that we are starting to lose our ability to be critical readers and
The following essay will discuss how the ideas in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, is expressed in the futuristic novel Feed, by M.T Anderson.
An article published by The Atlantic went viral in 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote the piece that essentially said that he felt as though online search engines were giving him a temporary education that would go away when his mind drifted off to the next thought. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.” (Carr, 2008) This is not true. Google gives us the ability to become educated on topics that without the advancement of this technology, may never have been possible. Google is nearly limitless, anything that can be learned in a library, bookstore or a classroom can be found on Google. It allows us to quickly gather and take in the information it provides to us without the hassle of hours of searching through books to locate information. The site contains about 100 million gigabytes of data and can supply you with that data in as little as 0.18 seconds (Statistic Brain,