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William Poundstone The Internet Isn T Making Us Lonely Analysis

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In “The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber-- It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’”(New York Times, July 27, 2016), William Poundstone expresses his take on how the internet is changing societies definition of common knowledge. Poundstone starts by giving an example of how a bank robber was mislead into believing lemon juice would turn him invisible to any camera. Obviously, this is not the case and Poundstone describes this as the Dunning- Kruger effect, when people are not aware of the short extent of their knowledge. The people fallen victim must not be aware of how little they know and, according to a study by Davis Dunning and Justin Kruger, they believe they know more than up to two-thirds of other people. William Poundstone believes the Google
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In Nicholas Carr’s writing, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” mentions multiple examples of why the internet and the simplicity of looking up and getting exactly what we were looking for are causing a drop in the way we think and the intelligence of our minds. Carr explains that he was once a huge reader and could comprehend ten to fifteen-page articles easily, but the directness of the internet had dulled his brain that he could not read a few paragraphs before he gave up and his mind started drifting off into the emptiness of his brain. Carr mentions that the Net is being the universal medium causing information that is read and learned go in one ear and out the other. Carr defends his positions by adding multiple examples showing that the Net

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Comedian Jon Stewart states “The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom”. In the chapter “Public Thinking” from the book Smarter Than You Think, Clive Thompson addresses the topic of modern day technology, and argues that the internet is an effective and useful tool which positively impacts the way people think. Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times and Wired Magazine, as well as author of the book Smarter Than You Think with degrees in Political Science and English. He supports this claim by referring to Ory Okolloh, a law student and blogger about Kenyan politics and corruption, and describing her positive experience with the internet. He then refers to the “audience effect” which can clarify the mind and change one’s performance.

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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 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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Humanity is in a perpetual state of trying to make living in the world an easier place. In just a few seconds, people can access information at their disposal, instead of having to look through different books to find what you need. But the question arises; does this boundless place for information honestly make us more informed than before we had the internet? Joe Keohane, the author of the article “How Facts Backfire,” is a political journalist who has also written articles on technology and culture.  

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Carr pulls out a collection of his ideas on what the internet is doing to the way we think. Throughout his essay of “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas

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Typically, we think about everyday people, kids, and ourselves. Most everyone has used the internet to think for them some way, what Carr fears, never taking the time to think deeply about what we’ve found. He suggests, instead of technology enhancing our abilities, humans are using technology, as a crutch, to think for them. Carr states that “as we come to rely on to computers mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence of the world that flattens into artificial intelligence” (328). Thompson is not oblivious to the negative aspects of the internet, in fact even he “[is] hoping the trade-off is worth it.”

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In “The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber--It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’ (New York Magazine, July 27, 2016),” William Poundstone argues people think they know more than they actually do and our use of the internet makes things worse because we don’t bother to memorize facts anymore. To begin with, some people are easily fooled with or without the internet. This can be further explained by the “Dunning-Kruger effect.” To test this effect, physiologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger gave a series of questions to students and then them asked to rate their confidence in their answers. Those whose confidence levels were high did not score as well as their peers and vice versa.

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