Is Google Making Us Stupid? Throughout Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he goes over what he believes the internet is doing to our brains, and why it may be bad. To begin, Carr describes that he himself had felt that something in his brain was changing. He felt a significant change is his thinking, reasoning, and concentration skills, especially when it came to reading.
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.
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he states that our minds are changing because of the time we spend online. He explains how not only does the media just supply the information to the users, it also morphs the thoughts that flow in people’s minds. Previous habits such as reading are slowly being affected, but only few have noticed the change. For instance, when surfing the web people skim the articles they’re reading and merely go from link to link. Carr talks about how easy it is to research and find things on the internet within minutes maybe even seconds.
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.
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).
Can you improve your memory by writing on the Internet every once-in-awhile? Clive Thompson, a freelance journalist, blogger, and science and technology writer, wrote Public Thinking, published in 2013. Despite being pro-internet now, when the Internet first came out Thompson was pessimistic about it- joining the older generations, despite being twenty-one at the time, who like before believed this new advancement would destroy everything they knew. Though the twenty years following, its release, changed his view, showing him the remarkable ways it allows people to express themselves, even on a global scale, and inspiring him to write about the usefulness of technology- especially the newly created Internet. Thomson’s Public Thinking, a chapter
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is the reason why people are losing their ability to focus, think critically, and is somehow hindering the brain. Carr speaks the thought that the Internet is effecting the way people, and himself think, live, and read. He shows this through examples from other people and his personal experiences. He thinks that it is not an intelligent thing to rely on a computer to give people information. Carr explains how since he spends a lot of time online, he is not able to focus on other things that are not involving the internet.
Nowadays when we are not sure of question we turn towards the Internet, to try and find answers. In the Article "You Still Need Your Brain," Daniel Willingham argues that memorizing facts remains an essential skill even in today's world of internet searches. He builds his argument by first acknowledging the importance of technology and then explaining why it cannot replace human memory. . Willingham provides scientific evidence and real-life examples to support his claim, making a compelling case for the value of memorization in our ever-changing world.
We rely too much on the computer to do all the information we can now type a question on Google, and automatically we have the answer, and we want to believe the answer is right because we don't want to spend hours clicking different articles online and reading
After reading the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, our group came to a decision that we agreed with Carr. Google is, in fact, making us stupid. Throughout the article, Carr emphasizes how our minds are changing as a result of the time we spend online. Throughout the article, Carr makes the argument that the internet has affected how human beings process and retain information. The problem with the internet that Carr addresses are that media does not just supply information to the users, it also shapes the thoughts that flow in the people's minds.
In the article “Critical Thinking in the Internet Era”, by Leah Graham and Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, from Communications of the ACM, published on May 2003, the researchers stated that the students’ preference on using the internet to research information has made them susceptible to misinformation and unreliable sources. They found that students are incapable of verifying the validity of these sources as they allegedly believe sources on the internet too easily (Graham & Metaxas, 2003). However, their skepticism in using the internet for research has led them to undermine the critical thinking capacities of students who used the internet for research. This paper will provide the following supports: that the researchers tended to create generalized judgments towards the validity of certain sources, that they largely exaggerated the harms on
Rhetorical Analysis of “Mind Over Mass Media” Many people believe that new forms of electronic media such as search engines, which offer easy access to incredible amounts of information are harmful to people’s intelligence because they allow us to understand only the main idea of the information provided instead of allowing us to gain an in depth understanding of the topic. Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University argues in his essay “Mind Over Mass Media” that these new forms of electronic media are actually beneficial to people's intelligence and the accusations made against it are unwarranted. He is successful in doing this because he brings up counterarguments and disproves them, he offers advice in practicing self control when
The Influence of Technology In the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that utilization of the internet has an adverse effect on our way of thinking and functioning in everyday life. Whether it be reading a newspaper, or scrolling through Facebook, internet media has forever stamped its name in our existence. Carr explains to us that the internet is a tool used every single day in today’s society, but also makes most of us complacent with the ease of having the world at our fingertips.
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.
Nicholas Carr's argument against the internet was very strong, and it persuaded me. It is very difficult for me to go against his opinion. I agree that the internet is changing us, but not in ways we think. There are long-term effects of using the internet as often as we do. He states that the internet is changing the way our brains function such as having a shorter attention span, negatively changing the way we critically think, and negatively changing our reading skills.
