Is Google Making USupid Analysis

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In his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr shows great concerns to the advancement of technology. In this controversial article, through giving a series of examples, Carr points out the negative and long term effects that Google may bring to human. Although Google provides convenient access for people to get the information, people’s way of thinking has been altered and harmed by Google. Whether Google is making us smart or stupid is a controversial topic in recent years. On one hand, supporters insist that Google is a quick and convenient tool that extend people’s degree of knowledge in a way never happen before. On the other hand, opponents state that it is because of Google’s powerful storage of information that people …show more content…

According to Carr, Google harms our brain in two ways, the first one is the inability to concentrate, and the second is lowered depth of contemplation. First, we need to understand what is the definition of smart. According to the Wikipedia, smart means having or showing a quick-witted intelligence. Intelligence means having good understanding or a high mental capacity, quick to comprehend, as persons or animals. It mainly concludes 5 aspects: memory, attention, imagination, contemplation and observation. What Carr means we can summarize into the lower degree of concentration and contemplation. Therefore, he concludes that Google is making us become stupid. In fact, some users (include myself) indeed appear the above problems after their long term use of Google searching. But, only because of these 2 symptoms that concludes that Google is the making people stupid is over unilateral, and incorrect. Reversely, from the angle of function, Google is helping us. (statistics) Therefore, the related problems after long term use of Google, it is not Google’s fault, but of people’s attitude and living …show more content…

Since human enter 2000s, the living pace become more and more fast, accomplishing the higher level of competition stress. In this stressful situation, people try their best to fulfill biggest desires in a shorter time. Doing fast and getting more has become the latest living style of general people. With this “fast is best” principle, people fasten their speed to absorb knowledge. Reading now has become a battle, during which our eyes move swiftly to search keywords, get the main meaning, and then flip to the next sentence. In addition, the range of reading also largely expands. We go on to the next related article even before we finish the former one. The advancement in speed and range guaranteed our cover of information, but respectively, it limits our depth in understanding their connections. If people want to fully master the knowledge, a certain period of time spent on contemplation is necessary. Just as Carr said, “human memory is not the same as the memory in a computer: it’s through remembering that we make connections with what we know, what we feel, and this gives rise to personal knowledge. If we’re not forming rich connections in our own minds, we’re not creating knowledge”. Without the investment of time, knowledge will only stay in surface. They “zip along the surface like a guy in Jet Ski.” Although people get the answer, they don’t learn anything at all. The

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