Cashe’ Fann
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Over the years, technology has thrived and became very popular. One of the most used technologies over the time is the Internet. Although, it is very popular many have noticed the effects that it has on our mind and the way we process new information. It’s a struggle to even deeply read an article that is more than a few pages for many that once was so very easy. Nicholas Carr is one of the many people that have noticed what the Internet is doing to us!
Nicholas Carr believes that Google is making us stupid, I totally agree with him! This article is appealing to me because it is a modern day problem and has a lot of controversy over the issue. I also chose this article because I too am a frequent user
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He also want to stir up the conversation about what the Internet effects in general. He uses the rhetorical appeal ethos in the article a lot to support his arguments. He used ethos in the article, when Carr included the media theorist Marshall McLuhan statement about the internet which explained how the media not only provides information, but also shape the process of thought. McLuhan made this statement in the 1960’s and we now see that this is true from research and many other professionals. We no longer fully read articles or stories we often “skim” and click the links to find what we are looking for. He often used past and present situations to describe the effect that Internet has had on people too. Carr used the metaphor “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” This metaphor perfectly described how his mind has changed and how he now reads compared to how he did in the …show more content…
He targets the younger generation because that is whom and will be mostly effected by the Internet and other technology. He immersed the audience in the article by speaking on text-messaging which is very popular for the younger generation. Carr admitted, that yes we might be reading more today than we did in the 1970’s and 1980’s, when the television was our medium, but it’s a different kind of reading, and has terrible effects on the way we think. Maryanne Wolf worries that the style of reading, might just be weakening our capacity for deep reading that emerged from earlier technology. She once said we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” The ability to interpret a piece of writing, and make connections remains disengaged because of this new way we are accustomed to reading called “skimming”. This is taking a huge toll on the younger
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
In the beginning of the article, Nicholas Carr talks about how his mind started to alter due to technology. Carr feels that these changes are possible, making him go instane. Some of these changes are not being able to read a full article to skimming. According to Carr, “now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (Carr 314). Ever since Carr has started using technology his mind seems to work in a different way than it used to be. Before, Carr would spend long period of time reading books and articles, now he searches everything on Google and finds the information he needs. Carr wants others to feel sympathy for him because he feels that technology is controlling his way of thinking and to get others to agree with
Both Nicholas Carr and Malcolm Gladwell debated how the Internet has affected humankind in both positive and negative ways. Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of Small Change:Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. Nicholas Carr is a writer who has formerly written for the New York Times, The Guardian etc, he also wrote Is Google Making Us Stupid? Gladwell’s and Carr’s essays identifies how the internet has a damaging effect on people.
In Nicholas Carr’s novel The Shallows, Carr believes that technology is taking over the way we should think. Anytime a person researches and reads online there is potentially significant damage to the way the human brain processes and retains information. When a person think about looking up information or just looking for something to do, they make a beeline for the Internet. Very few people are willing to pick up a book and start reading it these days, they would rather use digital media or other Network. The Network is very powerful and is getting more powerful each day. Andrew Brown once said “The internet is so big, so powerful, and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.” (Brown Brainyquotes). Although the Internet easily catches the reader’s eye and has become more common in schools in recent years, the Internet is responsible for decrease of social skills.
Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” poses the theory that the invention of the Internet is changing the nature of thinking and learning. In an age where answers to almost any question are only a few button clicks away, it seems we are living in an enlightened time. The internet has offered us so much, from scientific collaboration to crowd funding and to my personal favorite, more cute cat videos than I could watch in my lifetime. The internet has impacted humanity, raising the bar for research and leaps forward in technology. Carr seems to disagree, arguing that the internet and Google can be blamed for making us “stupid.” Google and the Internet are changing the
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
In modern society, people have become over reliant on the internet and as a consequence of this, our ability to think critically has reduced significantly. An author that contributes to this point, Nicholas Carr, argues in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, how the internet is turning people into weak-minded thinkers. Carr states his argument by bringing up multiple points such as how we’ve become too dependent on it, how we’ve spent a lot of time doing unproductive things on it, and how it does the majority of work for you. I believe that the internet can make people stupid, but that’s not its true intention. Despite some of the strong claims that he makes, I realized that the real issue is that people don’t know how to properly
Half of the world’s population has access to the internet and is increasing due to the evolution and development of technologies in our society. These powerful technologies tend to increase how many hours we spend staring at a screen, slowly rewiring our brains and changing the way we analyze things. The Internet has a potential to help us periodically, but it can also affect us negatively, mentally, and physically, shown in The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. In the novel The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, he shows a similar mindset towards the negative effect of the internet and how it affects our ways of thinking, receiving, and changing the way we act by using different tools. The internet has a very strong influence and is deviously rewiring our abilities to learn and converse with others. Carr’s argument and standpoint is a qualification that the internet is turning us into shallow individuals, people who have no in depth
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.
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” by Sherry Turkle are two articles that explore how technology influences our daily lives. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” discusses the effects of the internet in our society, how it is robbing us of our deep thoughts, memories and our ability to read books. Carr also talks about how the internet has become our primary source of getting information. The writer also discusses about how he’s having difficulty focusing on reading. “How Computers Change the Way We Think” is talking about how people don’t use their brains full potential capacity to solve problems. Instead, we depend on technology to do that for us.
He states how he used to spend hours reading, but his concentration started to drift after two or three pages. He backed up his theory with stories from others who say they’re experiencing the same thing. But they still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how the internet affects cognition. After a brief history lesson, Carr starts to incorporate Google into the article. He tells us about Google’s history and their mission. Carr states how Google, and the internet itself, have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind. Apparently these companies do not want us reading slowly or for leisure. Carr then ends the article by stating that we are turning into robots ourselves, and that we are relying on computers to mediate our understanding of the
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.
Paragraph 14-16: Carr concludes that reading helps the brain to develop a rare kind of mental discipline. Our ancestors needed the constant shift in attention to survive but since then we have evolved to this mental discipline. The internet is whats making us go back to the way our ancestors use to think and possibly even making our brains worse.
The internet has made things quick and easy to accomplish, but it has had negative effects on concentration and the reading abilities of individuals. The internet is changing many thing around us, but maybe not all are good changes.
The World Wide Web is responsible for making my generation’s internet natives dimwitted. My generation’s brains are being altered, we can’t concentrate, and we get easily distracted by the simplest advertisements in the world. If my generation’s attention spans get shorter, become increasingly incapable of concentrating, and having our cognition change often, then the world will be in store for calamities. Hence, Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet seems to be diminishing his capacity for concentration and contemplation does apply to my generation’s internet natives.