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Response to Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'
By Trent Batson 03/18/
Criticism of the Web most often questions whether we are becoming more superficial and scattered in our thinking. In the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr published "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (theatlantic/doc/200807/google). Like other critics, he sees change as loss and not as gain. But, his own criticism is superficial and misses the humanizing impact of Web 2.
And, academics often express the same concerns Carr doesin his Atlantic article. Our concerns are about the qualitative differences in how net-gen students think and write and learn. Nicholas Carr is giving voice to these concerns. This article is about one skill that he believes is being eroded, that of reading:
"I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
He says this change is because of all the time he spends online. As a writer, he finds the Web a valuable tool, but he thinks it's having a bad effect on his concentration. He says "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." He refers to a 5-year study in the UK, which found that people visiting their sites "exhibited 'a form of skimming activity,' hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they'd already visited."
Carr admits that we, as a culture, read a lot more because of the Web, but laments that "our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." And he highlights a quote from an essay by the playwright Richard Foreman:
"I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense, and 'cathedral-like' structure of the highly educated and articulate personality--a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) there placement of complex inner density with a new kind of self--evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available.'"
As an advocate for technology in higher education over the past 20 years, I've heard similar warnings for years. Indeed, some people reading this article may believe that Carr has hit the nail
on the head. There is no question that our habits are changing: The Web has captured our attention and is now the default starting point for almost all work. The Web is different in almost all aspects from a book. Printed books have contained the essential truths of humanity for half a millennium. The Web is where we look for knowledge that usually exists not in final, authoritative, single-author text blocks but in the aggregate of wisdom from many sites.
Ummetul Islam <ummetul7@gmail> Wed, Sep 26, 3:33 PM (18 hours ago)
to me
people.loyno/~aabrouss/responce
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
or only a bit lazy?
Published in the 2008 July/August edition of the The Atlantic , Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," discusses what Google, the most expansive search engine on the
Google makes things easier for the user, but ultimately does not make them stupider. Carr, in a small vein of humility, tells his readers that they should be "skeptical of his skepticism," a point that we found to be critical when reading Carr's article. The evidence is there and a valid argument is presented, but they way in which Carr chooses to articulate and conclude these points seems to be a bit harsh.
#n his essay) "#s Google Ma$ing %s Stupi&'( Ni holas Carr argues that usi ng the internet for sear hing an& rea&ing is altering the *ay that e) as humans) rea& an& pro ess infor mation. +e supports his argument ith ane &otes on his on an& others e,perien es rea&ing an& sea r hing information online an& ho it has altere& their a-ility to rea& long te,ts) either online or in print. eyon& the ane &otes) Carr also uses re ent stu&ies an& s$epti ism of past *riting hange s to e,press his argument
ummary: Is Google making us stupid
Nicholas Carr
An article that was written by a Nicholas Carr “Is Google making us stupid?” impressed me and many other people disclosing the hidden truth about the Internet and its influence on people. The results of the analysis provided in the article are quite pessimistic. According to the data provided there, people are losing an ability to read and think critically. It doesn’t mean that one day people forget how the alphabet looks like, it only means that the way how people read and think is quite different from the one it was before the Internet era.
At the very beginning of the article, Nicholas Carr mentions that he has some problems with reading long pieces of works. As a result, he decided to analyze this question. He mentions that the more time he spends on the web, the worse situation with reading is. For example, it became harder for him to read even three pages pieces. To understand whether it is a unique case or other people also suffer from this problem, it was decided to ask other quite smart people, who were fond of reading long books. All of them states, that their ability to read is worse than it was a few years ago. A lot of them have complaints about their attentiveness when reading. For example, Scott Karp, who is a writer of a blog about online media confessed that he just stopped reading books. However, in college, he was a lit major. The conclusion of the analysis is quite simple – the web has changed the way we read.
One more example that can prove that there are great changes in the reading sphere, is that people, who use online libraries don’t read the books – they skim them. It is enough for them to look through the title and outline to understand the information. A lot of people don’t understand why this is happening with them. People always search for the convenience and create amazing
things, such as the Internet, computer, and typewriter to make the life easier. However, they don’t understand that we are connected with our machines. The answer is simple – the author thinks that the equipment we use to read or write down information have an impact on how the information is taken or provided. The simplest example will be a typed letter and a hand-written letter. Everyone can see the difference between these things.
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One more thing that the author is worried about is what kind the information we get from Google. People get used to believe mass media and the Internet. However, it is necessary to be very attentive because none of them presents the pure information. It is always shaped the way the authority wants this. Unfortunately, critical thinking skills are also bad nowadays. It is very hard for people to decide when they see the truth, and when they get the shaped information.
I totally agree with the Nicholas Carr’s arguments provided in the article. I think that we really have a great connection to the equipment we use for communicating and reading. From the one side, it is very convenient and it makes the lives of the people easier. On the other hand, people forget how to read and how to think. They only can scan the material because after a few minutes it is hard to stay attentive. Apart from this, the author states that deep reading is the basic thing of deep thinking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much information about the solution of this problem. Apart from this, I didn’t notice many reasons, why it is necessary to search for a solution. I think that every person can control him/herself, so everything, including deep reading and thinking, depends on the personal abilities and desires.
A Summary/Response of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" By Nicholas Carr In the essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Nicholas Carr shares his thoughts about the internet, and how it has been changing our cognition. In the beginning, the author addresses how the internet is helpful since it has unlimited information and its convenience. After that, Carr laments the fact that the internet is changing our brain. He explains how the internet is making peoples' attention spans shorter which is impacting their ability to read and write. In addition, the writer claims that the web does not make people think deeply because of the way that it represents information to the readers. He points that people are becoming impatient due to the internet. In the end, Carr is worried about the fact that the internet is becoming more intelligent than humans. To sum up, the writer believes that the Internet is affecting our brains. I think that using computers might change the way our brains function for three significant reasons. First, most of the people nowadays have an affinity for smartphones and computers that if they disappeared, these people would not be able to think clearly. They organize everything in their lives with technology. Secondly, according to Olds, “the brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions"(95). That means, when the brain is used to technology doing everything, the brain will not develop itself or change. Because of that fact, I believe that a voluminous part of our brains has not been used. Finally, I have had an experience where I have seen how technology affected a four-year kid. Doctors told the mother of the child to take his "I-
others drift from the article provided and write an essay which encompasses material from other articles. Below are aspects or a simple summary of the article “Is Google making us stupid?”
Article Review Of Is Google Making Us Stupid
Our minds are changing as a result of the time we spend online. The easiness with which people are currently tackling previously strenuous activities like research, etc. is indeed baffling. Everything has been made easy which reduces the amount of energy we spend thinking and discerning between conflicting ideas. Media does not just supply information to the users, it also shapes the thoughts that flow in people’s minds. Previous habits such as reading are slowly being affected, but only a few people have noticed the change. Changes in the way people think and absorb information have been detected. We are currently adopting the old styles of efficiency and immediacy which weakens our capacity to read deeply. In the most subtle of ways, new technologies tend to change our original habits as well as the way we think. The more we use the new technological innovations and inventions the more we change and start taking on similar qualities as the technologies. People have become hurried readers as well as absorbers of information. We have become like the Internet which seems to have a little bit of everything. The same way that the Internet injects a medium’s content with different content is the same way people are absorbing information. Traditional media has also been affected. Television programs currently have pop-up ads and newspapers have also been tailored to meet the needs of this generation. The idea of having the machine or the system come first is slowly taking shape and effect. Inventions initially thought
to increase efficiency and help a man to generate or produce with maximum effort, and this output is slowly taking the place of a man. Subsequently, man’s brain has also being conditioned and is, therefore, unable to learn or function as it used to in the past. Google’s ambition of making it easier for people to access information is indeed interfering with the works of the brain. The brain is a component that should always be engaged, however, with Google’s increased or improved future search engine, brain’s use will surely diminish. The belief that thinking is a result of a mechanical process is also startling. This necessitates the idea of improving our brains or having them replaced with better and highly efficient ones. Initially, people learned through ambiguity and also by having as many questions as possible. However, currently, Google and its compatriots in the field of technology wants us to believe that ambiguity is but a bug which needs to be fixed. Our brains represent the epitome of intelligence. The way people process information is indeed many times slower than the computer. However, the most intriguing question is, should we seek to have our processing speed increased or improved? At what expense or at what cost will this be? Google are after every simple piece of data we provide them, and in most occasions, we often have to cancel some adverts without considering the simple fact that we are the people who made it easier for such pop-up ads to appear on our computers. Newer inventions create illusions of a better future and a better place. However, people are always fascinated with new things and hence the excitement and rush towards them. The world needs to be wary of the new inventions and technologies. While the old ways of doing things might seem archaic and less efficient than the new ones, they are not only stealing from us the fundamentals of life but
main means of media. Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist, believes that the ability for deep reading that was nurtured by the printing press is being weakened by the way the web puts emphasis on ease and speed of information. Online reading has created “mere decoders of information”, leaving a detachment in the interpretation of text.
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While language is instinctive, reading must be learned; studies show that our mental circuitry is mapped differently dependent on the language we are reading. This suggests these circuits will be mapped differently when we learn via media and technology as opposed to reading printed material. Similarly Friedrich Nietzsche found that “our writing equipment takes part in forming of our thoughts”; when he started using a typewriter his terse prose became even more concise. While it used to be believed that the human brain was fixed by adulthood, James Olds, a neuroscientist, notes that nerve cells are continually forming new connections and rejecting old ones. Lewis Mumford, author of Technics and Civilization, explains how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences”. The invention of the clock helped to create the scientific mind but also took away our sense of reason as described in Joseph Weizenbaum’s book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation.
Carr explains that the Internet encompasses the majority of our other intellectual technologies. The internet also takes in
multiple mediums and morphs them; for example, articles are bordered by flashing ads and hyperlinks. This technique is also being mirrored in other forms of media, with television programs containing pop-up ads and newspapers and magazines having shorter articles. As media continues to have more influence over our thoughts there have been few studies done on how the internet is reprograming us. Carr believes that Frederick Winslow Taylor, the author of The Principles of Scientific Management, was the father of the industrial revolution. The system Taylor created for breaking a job down into roles is still used today in factories worldwide. Taylor held that his algorithm provided “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Carr suggests as computer engineers gain more power, they search to improve the internet through Taylor’s methods, looking for the perfect algorithm to accomplish “knowledge work”.
Google’s headquarters, “Googleplex”, is “the Internet’s high church and its religion is Taylorism.” Google gathers data from search engines and other webpages and directs thousands of experiments with that data. Google’s ultimate goal is to refine algorithms from that information that will let them create the perfect search engine that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Google views the information as a product that can be used to make us more fruitful thinkers.
Carr wonders just how far this goal to better our thinking will go. He feels the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are trying to turn the search engine into artificial intelligence that connects to our brains. Carr suggests that it is admirable to try and solve problems that have not been solved before, but questions if artificial intelligence will really make humans “better off”. The companies of the internet operate with the ideal that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines and the faster we surf the internet
Argument Summary and
Analysis– Is Google Making
Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr –
I'm Bekah
6 years ago
by Bekah Hogue and Roderick Arceneaux
In Nicholas Carr’s piece, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he makes an argument many people might not ever consider. He claims that the internet has actually affected how human beings process information. He begins to illustrate this point using a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL, the supercomputer, is being disassembled by the man the machine nearly (purposefully) killed. Carr emphasizes the fact that the computer could “feel” its’ “brain” being taken away as the man stripped it of its memory circuits. This is the tone that Carr sets to then place his theory on the reader.
He explains how his mind has become much more erratic since his use of the internet. “I get fidgety, lose the thread, [and] begin looking for something else to do,” he says. The amount of access to information that people have these days is astounding, and their consumption of it, even greater. He supports this by mentioning how “.. don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.”
Carr doesn’t just back up his observation with anecdotes, however. He pulls a scientific study from the University College London that is in line with his assessment. The researchers observed the behavior of visitors to a couple popular sites. They stated,
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
Carr then attempts to explain why this may be occurring in the first place; he says that the human brain is ductile. He introduces a concept called “intellectual technologies” meaning that we essentially embody the technology we possess. Carr uses the mechanical clock as an example of this by saying,
... [It] helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” However, he says that this, along with plenty of other instances in technology, created a powerful dichotomy. “In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses, and started obeying the clock.
The attention is then turned to Google. The creators admit to desiring to devise something just “as smart as people—or smarter.” The developers believe that they are genuinely working on solving the currently unsolvable–artificial intelligence on a gigantic scale. Carr makes a point to mention that the fact they say humans would be “better off” is worrisome. He concludes this point by saying,
It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized.
At the end, Carr says it’s okay to be “skeptical of [his] skepticism”.. he does leave the piece on a somber note, once again reminiscing of that memorable scene with HAL,
the shift toward using the internet as our main information source. He laments the new idea of considering the mind as a computer and bemoans the loss of deep, introspective reading and the intellectual stimulation it provides. After an article filled with citations from scholarly and scientific sources, he ends with a quote from a playwright, warning of the dangers we face in adapting to a world of “information overload”. Lastly, he revisits the 2001: A Space Odyssey scene he used to open the article. He identifies with the computer in the scene rather than the robotic human and seems to suggest that internet immersion is going to cause us to become more machine-like than machines themselves- a definite appeal to emotion.
Argument Summary and Analysis– Is
Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr –
I'm Bekah
6 years ago
Carr doesn’t just back up his observation with anecdotes, however. He pulls a scientific study from the University College London that is in line with his assessment. The researchers observed the behavior of visitors to a couple popular sites. They stated,
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
Carr then attempts to explain why this may be occurring in the first place; he says that the human brain is ductile. He introduces a concept called “intellectual technologies” meaning that we essentially embody the technology we possess. Carr uses the mechanical clock as an example of this by saying,
... [It] helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” However, he says that this, along with plenty of other instances in technology, created a powerful dichotomy. “In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses, and started obeying the clock.
The attention is then turned to Google. The creators admit to desiring to devise something just “as smart as people—or smarter.” The developers believe that they are genuinely working on solving the currently unsolvable–artificial intelligence on a gigantic scale. Carr makes a point to mention that the fact they say humans would be “better off” is worrisome. He concludes this point by saying,
It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized.
At the end, Carr says it’s okay to be “skeptical of [his] skepticism”.. he does leave the piece on a somber note, once again reminiscing of that memorable scene with HAL, warning that it may very well herald a “dark prophecy.”
.. we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
The title of Carr’s article is the first and probably most overt clue to what argument he is trying to make. Is Google making us stupid? The obvious answer might be that Google gives us instant access to all types of information and that that access is surely making us smarter, but that isn’t the conclusion Carr comes to in his article. The first thing Carr does is share a problem with the audience- he can’t focus on reading. His first few paragraphs work towards establishing the credibility of this problem and examining the causes behind it. We get a lot of rhetorical proofing in the process. For ethos, he tells us he’s not the only one with this problem. His friends and colleagues- the “literary types”- also struggle with this and so do some impressively credentialed bloggers. Then he concedes that that’s not enough to really prove anything, so he throws in some logos. He cites a few studies of internet behavior, giving them as evidence that there is something to the idea that internet use might be changing the way we think and leaving the audience to come to the logical conclusion that he may have a point.
Carr goes on to give a very well researched account of how text on the internet is streamlined to make the browsing experience fast, efficient and optimized for profit. When he describes how the internet is set up to make other people money and how our critical thinking skills and and attention spans are undercut in the process, he effectively delineates two sides (not necessarily all sides) of this issue and does a pretty good job of getting the reader on his.
He wraps up his argument by describing what we are losing in the shift toward using the internet as our main information source. He laments the new idea of considering the mind as a computer and bemoans the loss of deep, introspective reading and the intellectual stimulation it provides. After an article filled with citations from scholarly and scientific sources, he ends with a quote from a playwright, warning of the dangers we face in adapting to a world of “information overload”. Lastly, he revisits the 2001: A Space Odyssey scene he used to open the article. He identifies with the computer in the scene rather than the robotic human and seems to suggest that internet immersion is going to cause us to become more machine-like than machines themselves- a definite appeal to emotion.
what people are losing in the shift towards the web as our main source of information. The author talks about the new idea of considering the brain as a computer feels bad for the loss of deep reading and intellectual stimulation it offers for ones brains. Lastly, the authors quotes the 2001: A space Odyssey scene which he used to open the article. He identifies with the computer within the scene instead of the robotic human and appears to imply that the web will cause us to become more machine like instead of machines.
This paper will analyze Carr’s argument that the computer/internet is affecting our capacity to make our own associations and develop our own ideas.
I agree with the authors remarks that the internet is deeply impacting ones capacity to read and stimulate ones thinking capacity and such a scenario would greatly impact everyone. In his article, Carr explained how the internet impacted him. He pointed out that after he began using the internet, he was no longer able to read long texts of information without getting distracted and he is no longer firmly linked to what he was reading (Carr, 2015, p313). Carr is not the only person who has noticed this changes, other researchers and scholars share similar concerns. Bruce Friedman, a blogger who Carr used as an example pointed out that blog post which are over three pages is too much to absorb and which is what Carr and other researchers have experienced (p316). The reason for this according to Carr is that people are spending a lot of time the internet. Carr argued that spending a lot of time on the internet and switching from one website to another has changed the way he reads information (Carr, 2015, p316). He went on to note that he has stopped thinking the way he used to think. He went on to add that immersing himself in a lengthy article initially used to be very easy. His mind would get caught up in the narrative, and he would spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. However, since he began using the internet, he finds it harder to read lengthy books. His concentration usually begins to drift after reading two or three pages. This sentiments by the author are not unique to him since it is what other people are going through.
I fully support Carr sentiments we, as a culture, read a lot more owing to the internet, however, he lamented that one’s capacity to understand text, to make informed rich mental connections that is created when one reads deeply without getting distracted, remains largely disengaged. Carr highlighted a quote from an essay by the playwright Richard Foreman: he comes from a tradition of Western culture whereby the ideal was the complex, dense, and ‘cathedral-like’ framework of the very educated and articulate man/woman that carried inside themselves a personally developed and distinct form of the whole heritage of the West. But currently, all that we see within us (myself included) there placement of sophisticated inner density with a newer type of
self-evolving under the pressure of overload of information and internet of the ‘immediate availability.
Our reliance on the web has a dark side. An increasing body of scientific research have pointed out that the web, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is changing human beings to scattered and superficial thinkers. According to Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, the similar thread in such disabilities is the division of our attention. He went on to point out that the richness of ones thoughts, memory and personalities hinges on once capacity to focus the brain and sustain concentration (Carr, 2010). It is only when one pays attention to a newer pieces of information is when one is able to relate to it “meaningfully and systematically with information already well established in memory. These associations are crucial when it comes to mastering complex ideas and critical thinking.
When we are at all times distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be when starring at the screens of the computers and mobile phones, the brains tends to become unable to form the firm & expansive neural links which gives uniqueness and depth to ones thinking. Ones thoughts tend to become disorganized/incoherent, hence ones memories become very weak. This scenario conforms to the words of the Roman philosopher Seneca who pointed out 2,000 years ago that to be everywhere is to be nowhere (Carr, 2010).
The deep dependence on the internet is also impacting negatively on the performance of students in their school work. In a single research experiment that was carried out at a US university, half a class of students were allowed to use internet-connected laptops during their lectures, while the other half were asked to shut down their computers. At the end of this experiment, it was established that the students who were allowed to use internet-connected laptops during their lectures performed much worse on a subsequent test (Carr, 2010). The primary reason for this was that they were unable to recall what was taught in class since their attention/concertation levels was distracted. Initial experiments showed that as the number of links in an online document increases, one’s reading comprehension tends to decline, and as more forms of information are put on a screen, one tend to less of what we see.
The above cases are a clear indication that though the internet is good, it has a dark side to it. This is so it tends to impact negatively on ones thinking capacity, concentration levels and retention of information. If this trend goes on, then we as humans are putting ourselves at greater risks of not been able to fully realize and utilize the power of our brains, i. thinking capacity. By depending on the web, it is like we have delegated the role of thinking to the computers/web. Such a scenario is very dangerous since it makes us to become unable to think even when it comes to making simple decisions.
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Course: English (1301)
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