In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in 2008 in the Atlantic, Nicholas Carr criticizes that computers significantly impede people from deeply reading and thinking by presenting both artistic and inartistic proofs. To support such an extraordinary claim which contradicts the common belief held by the audience that the Internet provides people with great benefits, more rigorous evidence is expected. Though the author tries to prove that the internet undermines people’s intelligence by listing a large number of facts, testimonies, and reasoning, he fails to appeal to logos because of the use of unrepresentative examples which ignore some types of readers and faulty logic, which combined with his questionable ethos, ultimately …show more content…
Undeniably, his vivid description about negative impacts of computers successfully evokes similar worries from some readers. Nevertheless, there is a serious problem in these anecdotes that they are all stories of “literary types” (315) people, such as Scott Karp, who “writes a blog about online media” and “was a lit major in college” (315) as well as Bruce Friedman, who “blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine” (316). For non-literary types of readers who are unaddressed by the writer, they can hardly connect with the feelings form these literary types of bloggers. For them, computers may indeed encourage them to read more and longer, because they can conveniently read on the internet from their cell-phones whenever and wherever they are, while in the past the trouble of carrying heavy books prevents them from reading frequently. Also, online text contains lots of colorful pictures and useful links to help attract readers’ attention and improve their understanding of the article. Considering the contradiction between examples of literary types people and their own experience, non-literary types of audience will naturally doubt not only the credibility of the conclusion derived from these unrepresentative examples but also the author’s own trustworthiness. As the author belongs to the literary type, it is …show more content…
However, he makes a few mistakes in the process. For instance, he questions the motive of internet companies like Google by asserting that “the last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought” and “it’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction” (326). Though it seems like a plausible speculation for these companies’ purpose, he does not provide the readers with any concrete evidence. The fact that the companies are earning money by inserting advertisements or links in their websites can barely represent that it is the companies’ goal to distract people or that companies try to prevent people from deep reading. A guess without any proof cannot win the readers’ trust. In the meanwhile, the audience will start to be concerned about the author’s motive. As Carr is a writer who published lots of books on the influence of the internet on human brains, it is reasonable to suspect that he makes his argument for his own interest: to sell more his books by stimulating readers to think of the harm of the internet and of the benefits of printed
Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, Nicholas Carr in his article, Is Google is making us stupid?, addresses his beliefs that the internet is creating artificial intelligence as it effects our mind and the way we think. Throughout the article Carr supports this claim with rhetorical devices as well as Aristotelian appeals. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from a scene in the movie A Space Odyssey, then uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by conceding to opposition and stating appropriate vocabulary. In the article he compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people as a whole. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and
“Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell is an essay that describes how technology has changed social movements. “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr is an essay that describes how technology has made people have declining cognitive abilities. Both of these articles are about how people are using technology to accomplish tasks and goals they set to achieve. In my essay I’m going to compare the two essays and see where they excel and where they fail to expand their essay.
The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a result of surfing endlessly on the internet doing research. He supports this statement by explaining how his fellow writers have had similar experiences in being unable to maintain their concentrations. In analyzing Carr’s argument, I disagree that the internet is slowly degrading our capacity for deep reading and thinking, thereby making us dumber. The Web and Google, indeed, are making us smarter by allowing us access to information through a rapid exchange of ideas and promoting the creativity and individualization of learning.
Like Gladwell, Nicholas Carr believes the internet has negative effects. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr attempts to show as the internet becomes our primary source of information, it diminishes the ability to read books and extensive research. Carr goes on to give a very well researched account of how text on the internet is designed make browsing fast and profitable. He describes how the design for skimming affects our thinking skills and attention spans. He wraps up his argument by describing what we are losing in the shift toward using the internet as our main information source. Carr suggests the learning process that occurs in extensive research and through reading is lost. While the learning process can be beneficial to scholars and intellectuals, not everyone has the capability to follow through with it. The internet offers an education that anyone can have access to and understand. Also if Carr believes the learning process is better, this option is always available for people who want to learn according to this scholarly principal. However, for the rest of the population the quick and easy access has allowed the average population to become more educated, and to expose themselves to aspects of academia that previously is reserved for
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.
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
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.
If only my local library could hold the vast quantity of information that my hand held smart phone does. Carr insinuates that Google (and the internet) is making us stupid. I say they are making us lazy. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr informatively states that with the advancement of technology, Google search engine, and the internet we are become more distracted—with all the different forms of flash media, the amount of hyper-links after hyper-link after hyper-links, and clickable adds-- in turn we are doing less critical reading by way of the internet as opposed to a printed book. Being able to glance over several articles in hour’s verses days looking through books; being able to jump from link to link in order to get the information you need, never looking at the same page twice has decrease out deep thinking and reading skills. Now days, all forms of reading, e.g. newspaper, magazine, etc. are small amount of reading to get the main idea of what’s going on and if you would like more information you will have to go to another page to do so. In the end, C...
Humans are becoming more technologically-efficient every day. New inventions and innovations are constantly being made. The Internet is becoming more “reliable” every day. However, how much do we really get from the constant advancement of Internet use and smarter technology? Should we look at their contributions to the world as a benefactor or a curse? The common effect of “artificial intelligence” in the technology we use every day is examined by two brilliant authors, Nicholas Carr and Jamias Cascio. In Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he explains the effects of the Internet and technology in our society and claims that the overuse of technology is dangerous and can affect how our mind operates. Jamias Cascio, on the other hand, uses his article “Get Smarter” to show the positive effects of technology in our constantly adaptive society claims that technology may just be making our society smarter and more efficient. While Carr and Cascio both use the claim of cause in their articles to provide valid points on how technology affects our society, Carr’s article proves to be more effective because it focuses on skeptical-based evidence and uses a variety of appeals and proofs.
In the articles, “How Facts Backfire” and “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Keohane and Carr explain the cognitive blocks we are faced with in society. Keohane explains how we can be misinformed because of our beliefs. These beliefs can cloud our judgement of what is true and what isn’t true. Carr focuses on how the internet has changed the way we think. Carr includes how the internet can distract us, making tasks harder to complete. Both Keohane and Carr show us the negatives side effects of cognition.
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.
Humans have been creating tools that allow us to be do things that would be otherwise impossible since the beginning of our existence. The ability to use and develop new tools is what sets us apart from all other animals. Yet it seems that ever since these tools started being created there were also people that feared these new tools and claimed that they are bad for the human race. The present fear of new technology is illustrated in the essay “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. In this essay Carr argues that the internet and other new technologies are changing the way we think in a negative way. Carr claims that new technology is making our generation stupid. In opposition the article “Smarter Than You Think” by Clive Thompson
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
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...