Is Google Making USupid?

In only thirty years, the invention of computers and the Internet have shaped the world to what it is today. Many people in this age, however, still question if technology these days is benefitting everyone or is it harming everyone’s mind and body. There are good reasonings for both sides of this argument, but overall, technology has actually made society prosper in so many ways possible. It helps develop brain skills like visual acuity, gives everyone easier and faster ways of finding information, and it helps everyone keep close ties with one another, keeping everyone connected no matter when or where. The Internet and computer overall has been beneficial for everyone.

To begin, technology today has helped everyone develop their

In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, the New York Times ask two highly knowledgeable people about their opinions on if Google is making everyone stupid. Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google Inc., states an example of if he wanted to learn about the guidance computers on the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s. He states that his local library has 18 books on the Apollo missions in general, none of which give information about the guidance computers. However, when he goes onto Google and searches for it, it returns with 45,000 pages, including a definitive encyclopedia article and instructions for building a unit (Source 2). This example does show that Google has benefitted society positively and has made it easier and faster than ever to find the information someone

The article “Social Media as a Community,” by Keith Hampton, explains this point in detail well. He refers to a study done in 2011, where he was the lead author of an article in Information, Community & Society that found, based on a representative survey of 2,500 Americans, that was used to find if the participants were married or single, and the results were that those who used social media had more closed confidants (Source 1). Another follow-up study, “Social Networking Sites and Our Lives,” done by the Pew Research Center, found that the average user of social media had more close ties than and was half as likely to be socially isolated as the average American (Source 1). An article the author and his co-authors published in New Media & Society, found that not only that social media users knew people from many different backgrounds, but that much of this was because of people using these technologies who also spent an impressive amount of time socializing outside of their homes (Source 1). All in all, technology today as a whole has helped benefit society in a positive