Is Google making us stupid?

Nicholas Carr, author of the book The Big Switch: Rewriting the world from Edison to Google, explores the cause and effect of Google and technological progress. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in The Atlantic last summer, he approaches the way Google has affected the way our brains work. The advent of the internet introduced a whole new way to gather information and a whole new method for condensing that information down into a snapshot, easily accessible through our fingertips. Carr admits that Google has its advantages, pointing out that “research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.” But to that end a deeper connection to reading has been lost.

Carr continues, “Over the past few years I’ve had the uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going-it’s changing.” He noticed that his concentration had become short lived. Once he could lose time in literature and now he struggled to keep his focus after a few pages or even a few paragraphs. But Carr is not alone; other literary types have detected the change. Scott Carp, a blogger, has also taken notice of this phenomenon. Once a literature major in college and a “voracious reader” Carr confesses he has practically given up reading books altogether. The Internet has drastically altered the way we read and think; the shift has been subtle but very real. A study on online research habits done by University College of London perceives it. They noticed that people “hopped” from site to site and source to source, never staying at any one site for more than two pages.

The internet has provided the world with an unimaginable resource but anecdotal information is not reliable enough to base our reading habits off of. If Carr, Carp and the University College of London are right, which I think they are, our reading proficiency has taken a terrible nose dive into a shallow pool. I fear that with my constant exposure to media (i.e. television, internet, radio and print) I too will fall victim to this rewiring trend. The idea that my mind could so easily be taken hostage and reconfigured is frightening. Losing a piece of myself was never a part of the plan when I logged onto the internet.