Summary Of Is Google Making USupid By Nicholas Carr

With just a few keystrokes and a press of the enter key, Google connects users to the information they’re looking for. Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” explores the phenomenon that people will skim through articles and leave from one site to another. In addition, adds in anecdotes of some of history's greatest inventions and how they similarly relate to the Web. Although the Internet has transformed the way we receive and send information, I feel as if the responsibilities of reading are simply left to us to find out because we take the information for granted. “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, is a 2008 article that delves into the strange finding that people seem to skip through articles without actually understanding the

Instead of now looking at the sun to predict the time, anyone can look at a clock and instantly find out the correct time. Although Carr recognizes that the clock is a useful invention, he quotes Joseph Weizenbaum, the late computer scientist from MIT stating, “[the clock] remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality” (Carr 6). People no longer have to go outside and look in the sky to see the sun. Now they look at the clock and accept it for what it is. Carr illustrates that new advances and intellectual technologies often show how we can explain ever changing metaphors. For example, people used to refer to their brains as “a human clockwork machine”. Today, we refer the brain as a “well-oiled computer”. An interesting point is also made in which Carr says, “when the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed” (Carr 7). Businesses, companies, and little gimmicks all make up for the distractions we face on the Internet. As a result, many other media outlets like radio and TV, have also transitioned themselves to provide the same distractions users see when on the

In 1882, Taylor opened a steel plant in Philadelphia. His main goal was to figure out how he could speed up the process of making and producing steel. Taylor timed each worker by their every movement and even timed the machines. Eventually, Taylor discovered that he could take every step and turn them into small and precise instructions like an algorithm. Taylor’s new method increased productivity and sales of steel shot up drastically. Google is similar, but focuses on finding on what most users want to look for in a clear and concise manner. Carr describes Google as “obsessors of information”. Carr also points out, “what Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing the work for the mind” (Carr 9). They take all of the world’s information, use extensive algorithms to track which sites are frequently used, which information is useful, and which are not. Google co-founder Sergey Brin states, “certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off” (Carr 10). Larry Page and Sergey Brin often talk about how they want to create a machine-like HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s film, “A Timeless Space Odyssey”. For the most part, Carr believes this project is an ambitious project filled with uncertainty and interest all around, but still feels uncertain about how we will be able to reap in all