It appears traditional teaching methods in schools across the nation are undergoing significant changes, mostly due to the technological world we live in, and if this does not concern you, it should. Nicholas Carr argues in his essay, Is Google Making us Stupid that technology has made information so easy to retrieve from the internet that our brains are becoming a pancake because there is no analytical thought required in simple searching methods. Consider Google search, we no longer deep read but rather quickly skim from the results that pop up on a screen pressing a computer key for what we want. Carr argues even further, that our cognitive abilities to even perform simple reading tasks is deteriorating. James Paul Gee argues in his essay, …show more content…
Gee argues that schools have stopped teaching academics in the traditional sense, so the important skills needed to foster agile and analytical minds for the high tech global age will be absent (Gee 400). Carr does not give us any single solutions to saving our brains, but Gee does with his theory of using video games to trick kid’s brains into learning skills that they no longer learn in school. “The fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they’re in the classroom” (Gee 399). Considering that the US is spending 50 billion a year on education, if either Carr or Gee’s theories hold an accurate end result, I would personally find this not only alarming but also appalling! Furthermore, there should be a real concern about the violence in video games that Gee has not addressed, also. Gee simply argues “The phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is largely unstudied; more often, games are denigrated for being violent or they’re just plain ignored” (Gee 399). I would challenge this as inaccurate; studies may not be as largely nonexistent as Gee may think. In 2004, Craig A. Anderson published his study of violent video games in the Journal
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
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.
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
Steven Pinker and Nicholas Carr share their opposing views on the effects that mass media can have on the brain. In Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” it explores his viewpoints on how increased computer use affects our thought process in a negative manner. Carr critically analyzes that having widespread access to the internet via the internet has done more harm by disabling our ability to think complexly like it is the researching in a library. On the other hand, Pinker expresses how the media improves our brain’s cognitive functions. Pinker expresses that we should embrace the new technological advances and all we need is willpower to not get carried away in the media. Although both authors bring very valid arguments
People have always been looking for a reason why horrible things happen. The media is quick to blame video games as the target and cause of many shootings that have occurred, ever since Columbine and Quake. People have been blaming video games for violence for years now, ever since violent video games have been made. News reports blame video games more and more for each shooting, telling the public how this person played video games for x amount of hours a day, and that video games caused him or her to shoot people, and how video games encourage and reward violence. Anti-video game lobbyists have been campaigning to have violence removed from video games, citing resources that they themselves have created as reasons for such, poorly done studies where they confirm that kids are more aggressive through how much hot sauce they put on someone’s fries. While unbiased studies of video games and their links to violence are hard to come by, recent research has shown that video games do not in fact have a casual link to violence, and may even have the opposite effect. Violent video games have nearly no link to violence in teens or adults.
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
“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.
What if someone told you the devices you were using everyday were rewiring your brain? Would you believe them? In the article Is Google Making Us Stupid? author Nicholas Carr brought up the topic of Google, and the internet, affecting the way we read and think. Carr opened up the article by relating his topic to a scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The scene is one where a man is disconnecting a robot from its artificial “brain”. The robot says that he can feel his mind going. Carr then relates to the robot’s statement, saying that he can feel it, too. He states that the internet has been remapping his, and everyone 's, brain. Such a bold statement about something that almost everyone uses on a daily basis. For someone to state that
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
The allegation that videogames cause violent behavior in children has been present as long as videogames themselves. Some researchers said that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was one intense gamer. “Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech Shooter was seen by his roomates as odd because he never joined them in video games.”(Beresin) This debate will continue to go on in this country as long as there are horrific crimes that occur. There is much written in the research regarding this issue, and many differing views. The research that is presented in the next few paragraphs supports the theory that it is not the graphic video games that produce aggressive behavior, but other factors in a child’s life that create violent actions.
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.
Although the Internet is very helpful and has created many technological advances, we as humans are not created to function like a computer. Our minds require deep thought, human interaction, and thorough knowledge of things so we can remember and fully understand concepts. The Internet in itself is a very helpful tool. The advances that have fallowed are truly amazing, along with vast array of information available. Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is very flawed and does not provided adequate resources to back up his claims. That being said, Carr points out things that might otherwise have been looked over and accepted as normal. His question is sincere, thought provoking, and one we all should be asking ourselves before its too late.