Nick Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Nick Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he talks about how the way that technology and the internet have altered and changed the way we think by the way we read text and search for answers. The internet has made us less able to read the way people used to.

The article starts the quote from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey; “Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave?”(par. 1.) This was from a movie written in 1968, about a super computer that controls the ship on the trip in space. Carr uses this passage to get his idea across. Carr states “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neutral circuitry, reprogramming the memory.”(par. 1.) Then he goes on to state how he used to, “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.” (par. 1.) Then he talks about recently. “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.” This is the before and after affect on how much time he has spent online. Carr says, “For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet.” This has been the reason why Carr has altered his reading habits.

Then Carr later goes on to talk about, “Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his metal habits.” (par. 5.)Carr then goes to state a quote from Bruce Friedman’s own writing, “I have now almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print.”(par. 5.) This just shows that Carr isn’t the only one who feels that the world of internet has changed the way people think. Searching on the internet has changed the way in which we learn and read text. The reason used is that “the Internet has altered his mental habits.”(par. 5. ) What Friedman talks about shows reasons as to the Internet does mess with our minds. People of this culture no long write as much at a time or read as much as a time. Friedman states, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb.”(par. 5.) The amount of knowledge taken in has been decreased.

Later in Carr’s article there is a quote by James Old, “’The brain,’ [according to Olds,] ‘has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”(par. 12.) Olds talks about the brain beginning able to be changed. What Carr talks about is the internet changing the way in which it thinks from what people get from the Internet. After a few more paragraphs Carr says, “The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt o the audience’s new expectations.” (par. 18.) If every way we gather information then we will expect to see all media to change and that will soon make all text shortened and try to keep the interest until people want the change.