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Summary Of Is Google Making USupid By Nicholas Carr

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In Nicholas Carr’s news article. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”(2008), he expresses his concerns on how technology is changing the mental abilities of our minds.The author first provides anecdotal evidences by giving relevant quotes from reputable sources, he then introduces notable historical events as examples for his claim, and to conclude he challenges his readers to rethink their views of the internet. His purpose is to inform the reader on the altering effects of using technology. He seems to have a younger, tech savvy audience in mind because they are an easy group of people to connect with, since they are exposed to technology more than others. Just as Carr believes, as technology constantly changes, it forces our minds to adapt and change accordingly.
One way that technology is changing the way we think is through altering how we receive our information. The author, Carr, explains how he no longer “deeply reads text” but, with the internet, has compared his current information-grabbing to “a swiftly moving stream of particles”(3). In his own way, he is stating how his mind has changed from really being able to understand …show more content…

Using a stopwatch, a young man in the late 1800s named Frederick Winslow Taylor, was able to create the philosophy of systematic efficiency by timing factory workers. Through him timing what went quicker and what methods worked better, he was able to change the way people perceived work, leading to systems in many industries we see today. Also, the invention of the clock brought about people “dissassociat[ing] time from human events” and now measuring it “mathematically”(6). This invention brought about us, as humans, following the numbers on the clock in everything we do. Whether it be seeing what time that basketball game starts or when we “need” to go to sleep, this artificial man-made measuring device has changed the way our minds

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In Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” the author argues that the Internet has become a new form of acquiring knowledge in people’s lives. Additionally, the author supports his own statement by demonstrating that within just a few clicks, one can instantly gain any information or article online without the need to visit and search a physical library. However, even though the Internet ameliorates the quality and quantity of resources to gain knowledge, he believes that as the source of knowledge is replaced by a convenient web page, society becomes easily distracted. In Clive Thompson's article, “Smarter Than You Think.

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In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the author suggests that modern technology is changing the way him and other people think. He argues that, in the past, it was much easier to engage in long readings. Now, he claims, reading is more challenging and people are more likely to skim a passage rather than fully absorb the information due to excessive use of the internet (313-314). Carr uses Friedrich Nietzsche’s relationship with his typewriter as an example to express that with every new technology, he warns, the human mind is vulnerable to a change in structure (319). Carr observes and suggests that the more people use and rely on computers, the more the human mind essentially becomes a form of artificial intelligence

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In his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that the internet has been changing the way of human cognition. He supports his argument by emphasizes the negative experience that the readers are difficult to focus on deep reading when they read online. In addition, he illustrates the professionals’ studies and explanations of how new technology influences the internet users’ cognition. He concerns that artificial intelligence has slowly changed and has controlled human brain activity.

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Meredith Weese D. Ballenger ENGL – 112 10 March 2023 Evaluation Essay Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic magazine July/August 2008 issue titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid” purpose is to inform the readers. With the way the internet and its vast amount of information at the tip of our fingers has altered our ability to dive deep into readings. Whether it is for educational purposes or pleasure our ability to spend hours in a book have changed. Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” achieved its purpose because the examples he used from himself and others, the writing is clear easy to follow as he makes relevant references to the way other technologies have changed our way of thinking, his writing is objective.

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In his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr argues that our dependence on the Internet changes the way we read and think. He includes his own personal testimony to support this claim, as well as others’ descriptions, including several friends, and bloggers that Carr quote. While he lacks scientific proof supporting his claim, multiple testimonies support his claim that the internet has changed the way people think. However, Carr views this negatively, saying that “I’m not thinking the way I used to think… my concentration often starts to drift… I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text” (633-634).

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Analytical Review of “Is Google Making Us Stupid” As society advances into the technological era, innovations have served society as a catalyst to become more efficient, more technologically sound, and most importantly more in tuned with the rapid changes that are presented to us every day. Yet, there are some, that like to stay “old school.” There are some arguments that state these technological advancements are receding society’s intellectual advancement. Nonetheless, it should be apparent that the subject on society’s advancement has many view points and approaches. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr approaches the common issues of common availability of information through the internet; most importantly how it effects our ability to search and retain information.

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Nicholas Carr, a writer and literature major, took the time to write his opinion about the new technologies and how they are shaping us today. He did this in his work “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Carr explores the changes technology has on the world and the way people think. He argues that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding

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He explains how the creation of the printing press was believed to make people “less studious and weakening their minds,” (Carr) because the printing press allowed the common man to read almost anything at a time when books had to be handwritten. He also gives the example of the clock being brought into everyday life in the 14th Century and how it gave scientists a more understandable way to mathematically prove their theories, so more people could understand. These examples give the reader a better sense of the author’s point of view. He argues the internet has become one of these new technologies that many people were skeptical about, but he proves to the reader how it became an important advancement in content

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Carr describes the way our brains have changed as a consequence of using media. He later reports that when new or improved technology enters our lives, we begin to take on the qualities of those technologies, because it changes our “intellectual technologies”. He also uses the analogy of a clock, presenting the idea that we eat, work, sleep, and rise based on what time of day it is, instead of listening to our own senses. Carr then uses the claim from a 1936 British mathematician named Alan Turing that computing systems are subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies such as our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and our television. Likewise, he explains how the internet assumes what we are thinking and injects its context with hyperlinks, blinking ads, headlines, and other propaganda.

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A Response To Nicholas Carr: is Google Making Us Stupid? Google a powerhouse in today’s rapidly expanding technological society. My dad uses Google to access information. You use Google to access information.

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The internet is one of the most powerful and complex pieces of technology ever to be assembled. With this power, the internet can radiate some seismic waves into the way we live our lives. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he illustrates and explains his personal opinion and evidence from others to display the changes and effects the internet has on the world and the people in it. He goes into and explains how the internet is changing the way we read and take in information using his own personal experience with reading books today. He also shows that the internet itself is causing the world to change and adapt to its presence, causing essentially any aspect of the world to be engulfed by the internet and transform according

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He notes that the development of writing and the printing press led to significant changes in the way people thought and communicated. By comparing the internet to these historical developments, Carr suggests that the digital age is simply the latest iteration in a long line of technological advances that have fundamentally altered human cognition. In addition, Carr appeals to expert testimony to support his argument. He cites studies and quotes from prominent neuroscientists and researchers who suggest that the internet may be negatively impacting our ability to concentrate and process information.

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It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV”. What Carr is telling us obviously is that he believes that most of these tools that we use on a daily basis are controlling how we live but Carr sets this up as a scare tactic to think that we are not in control when in actuality we are in control of what we do with or without our tools. In my personal experience I use these tools on a daily basis but I use them in a normal matter. For example how I use the clock is to tell time because I myself have a busy schedule to keep up with during the day. We need these tools to keep up with society and manage our time because everything in society does not revolve around us.

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Carr could have not said it any better, “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” It has immobilized my ability to think on my own and read in-depth. Once again, technology has wiggled its way back into my life. Since reading this article, I have caught myself becoming dependent on the Internet. If I ever have questions,I automatically take out one of my devices and look up the question.

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Carr believes technology is slowly taking over human minds. He postulates that we “inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies” the more we rely on them. Carr echoes Lewis Mumford, author of “Technics and Civilization,” about how the invention of the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences” (Carr 320). However, he believes the invention of the clock helped to create men with scientific mind but also took away our sense of reason and judgment in “deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise,” and ultimately “we [stop] listening to our sense and [start] obeying the clock” (Carr 320). On the other hand, Thompson disagrees with Carr.

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