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 …show more content…
His first few paragraphs relate to the audience with a sense of pathos that continues to reappear as the essay unravels. For example, Carr states, “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (2). This anecdote generates the citation of research when he presents developmental psychologist and author, Mary-anne Wolf. Having written Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.”, wolf proves to be a reliable source, as well as an accurate development in Carr’s theory. She notes, “When we read online, we tend to become mere decoders of information.” (8). That statement opens a window for Carr to expand on his original idea in saying, “Our ability to interpret text, to make rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.” (8). It’s no secret that Wolf would agree. After just a mere search of her name titles appear such as, The Importance of Deep Reading, Is Online Skimming Hurting Reading comprehension, and How the Internet Is Rewiring Our Brains. If Carr’s theory is in fact correct, it would be fair to assume that most readers would look no further than that for proof. Carr however, omits that Wolf has evolved in her expressions, writing articles such as, Balance Technology and Deep Reading to Create Biliterate Children, Being a Better Online Reader, and Children of the Code. While this doesn’t exactly …show more content…
Often accounts of the past, fragments of a story, and the author’s own interpretations are the result of personal bias. Carr conducted his research with a specific theory in mind, and made selections based off what aligned with his interests. He cites a recently published study of online reading habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. The shcolars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. Apparently, they found that people using the sites exhibited, “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another. He offers that “Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.” (7). He’s implying the opposition, while in fact, if there’s no evidence that they did read it, there’s equally no evidence that they didn’t. Furthermore, after researching the article the actual quotes states, “Academic users have strong consumer instincts and research shows that they will squirrel away content in the form of downloads, especially when there are free offers. In spite of this behavior and the very short session times that we witness, there is no evidence as to the extent to which these
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 Is Google Making Us Stupid, Carr concerns about spending too much time on web, making people lose the patient and ability to read and think and changing people’s thinking behaviors. He gives so many points: he can not read lengthy article used to be easy; many author begin to feel that too much reading online let them hard to read and absorb a longish article; we put efficiency and immediacy above understanding when we read; The circuits in brain has been altered by reading habit.
The central message the author is trying to convey is that the rapid scanning of information we do on the internet negatively effects our intelligence. Also he would like everyone to be aware he is writing a book that you can buy.
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer have the capacity to sit down and read a book, as well as his own personal experiences with this issue. The internet presents tons of data at once, and it is Carr’s assumption that our brains will slowly become wired to better receive this information.
Carr concedes, saying that his internet theory cannot be based on anecdotes alone, but he is convinced Karp is on to something. According to the study done by College London, people spend most of their time skimming internet articles. Participants hopped from one site to anoth...
According to www.telegraph.co.uk, “[y]oung people aged between 16 and 24 spend more than 27 hours a week on the internet.” Certainly this much internet usage would have an effect on someone. What exactly is the effect of using the internet too much? Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that we are too reliant on the internet and it is making the us dim-witted and shortens our attention span. While Clive Thompson’s article “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” states that technology is not only a collection of knowledge, it also a method of sharing and recording our own knowledge. I fall between both Carr and Thompson. I agree with car on his points of us being too reliant on the internet but disagree when he states that it is making us less intelligent. Meanwhile, I also support Thompson’s statement that the internet allows us to assimilate vast amounts of knowledge but disagree with his opinion on how we should be reliant on
An individual’s first thought when needing information has turned to “Let’s Google that!” Carr’s utilization of Bruce Friedman’s article where he states, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print”, adds credibility to Carr’s claims. Here, he once again, shows how he relates to his audience through his statement, “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do”. He shows through his statement that he relates to Freidman, with similar values and traits, linking the two ideas
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
Rhetorical Analysis: “Is Google Making Us Stupid” 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 credible. 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. From the beginning of Carr’s article, he explains that the internet itself is making “us” more stupid. Carr talks about how his mind has changed over the years because of reading and looking things up on the internet.
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.”
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
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
Moreover, Carr’s article mentions that by using technology of any kind, users tend to embody the characteristics stimulated by that technology. He says that given that the Internet processes information almost immediately, users will tend to value immediacy. To explain, Carr gives the example of a friend of his named Scott Karp who was a literary major on college and who used to be an avid book reader. However, since the arrival of the Internet, Karp skim articles online because he could no longer read as much as he used too. He cannot pay attention and absorb long texts ever since he read online articles. Internet...
Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine - The Atlantic. (n.d.). The Atlantic — News and analysis on politics, business, culture, technology, national, international, and life – TheAtlantic.com. Retrieved April 21, 2012, from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/