Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In Nick Carr's article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,”he addresses the idea of our Internet restricting our thought process due to our dependence on it and constant use. Carr informs us of his personal experience with technology and how he is beginning to notice a change in his own abilities, saying something is “tinkering with his brain.” Ultimately it is affecting the way he reads; Carr states, “Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy.” Now, his interest becomes lost after a few web pages and he can no longer “get caught up in the narrative,” which he believes is all due to the last decade of surfing and searching and adding to great databases. Carr knows that it is not only he who's capacity for concentration is deteriorating. His friends agree saying, “the more they use the Web, the more they have to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” Some admitting they have quit reading books in general. Carr claims not only has technology changed the way he reads, but is also affecting his mental habits, and he is now “unable to absorb a longish article on the web or in print.” In a research conducted by University College London, it shows that the brain has been rewired so that for most, their form of reading is just “skimming,” or attempting to retain as much information as possible with the least amount of actual reading. Just browsing over titles and introductions has become the alternative for reading. Later on in his article, Carr agrees with Maryanne Wolf's ideas in her work, “Proust and the Squid: The Story of Science and the Reading Brain,” stating that “Reading is not an instinctive skill for human beings, it is not etched into our genes the way speech is.” In other words, we must teach ourselves the correct way to read because our reading done on the Net completely differs from our reading in books. I agree that our use of Internet has affected our ability to read because my personal experience with modern technology confirms it. So often have I chosen the easier route to reading and turned to a source such as Sparknotes, or something along those lines to summarize my book to help myself out because of my lack of time. Because I have the Internet as my 24/7 resource, I depend on it for easy and quick information as well as others do almost everyday. As the use of technology and the Net increases, the more our generation after us will rely on it. Eventually it will have completely disabled our brains and causing us to have dependency on it, and we'll all feel lost without it.