Nick Carr Claims (MLA)

Nichoclas Carr, in his essay "Is Google Making us Stupid", feels that because of the overuse of the internet our brains are no longer thinking deeply but instead they are just skiming along the surface. Carr states, "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski"(par. 4).

Carr asserts that we are reading differently today, and that this different reading is causing us to think differently too. He qoutes Maryanne Wolf, a college psychologist professor, who states, "[w]e are how we read", and that, " we tend to become 'mere decoders of information'” instead of being deep processors of it(par. 8).

Carr argues that the brain is "almost infinitely malleable", and that the brain will adjust to the way we use tools or technology. Carr, using research by James Olds, a nueroscience professor, shows that the brain's nerve cells "routinely break old connections and form new ones" meaning the brain "has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions"(par. 13).