Nicholas Carr's Essay 'Is Google Making USupid'

September 4th, 1998 in Menlo Park, California. The date of a major earthquake? Not quite. Possibly the release date of yet another Leonardo DiCaprio movie? Believable, but we’re a few months short of Titanic. Instead, we’re given one of the most innovative additions to our society, and arguably the staple of the 21st century. In a tiny garage-turned-office, Google was officially introduced and established by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Throughout the rest of the 20th century, and continuing through the 21st century, google became an incredible aspect of our everyday life. Not all consider google a helpful and vital staple but instead view it as a crutch. One author Nicholas Carr directly addresses the search engine in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. Throughout my essay, I intend to not only counter Carr’s argument but introduce the notion that technology has created an incredible and new kind of learning.

The search engine itself was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as previously stated, in 1995. Google was originally named “BackRub” and was created for the purpose of a research paper. In search of a topic for dissertation, Page began looking at mathematical links on the World Wide Web. Essentially linking pages all over the web together under one umbrella. That umbrella being BackRub, later named Google, that would link every aspect of the internet together. Google officially launched in 1998 and gained not only support but web pages as well. Throughout the early 2000’s the search engine of the century gained more and more support as well as advertisements, and international recognition. Google had effectively and permanently made its way into our