Dylan Langei "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Nicholas Carr writes about how the Internet is slowly brainwashing humans in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr strictly believes that in times before the Internet was created he was able to immerse himself in a book or article, but now his brain has been trained to skim and get bored after a couple pages. Carr continues with stating that his capacity to concentrate and contemplate within his head has been harmed purely because of the Internet. His mind now always just takes chunks away from lengthy writing and uses a vivid comparison, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Carr also informs the reader about when the mechanical clock was invented suddenly everyone had a time to wake up, time for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a time to go to bed; which Carr believes the Internet is the same because the way it structures our brains to work. Carr then feeds off that idea to state the Internet has structured television programs and newspapers to create pop-up ads and easy-to-browse info snippets to satisfy our now easily distracted minds. Carr then feeds the readers quotes from the creators of Google to make them sound like insane scientists who are trying to take over the world, “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 uses over fifteen credible sources to undermine the use of the Internet to his audience, and does a very good job of it.

My perspective on Carr’s ideas throughout his article is I somewhat agree. I can’t really vouch for the “old days” when Internet wasn’t created because my whole writing career I’ve been influenced and always around the Internet. Although I do believe our society is having a brainwash from new technology. I definitely relate to when Carr writes that he is easy distracted during a lengthy article or book, because I easily find myself looking at different Internet sites when I’m trying to read or write online ext. I was also really drawn in when Carr notes that the Internet is becoming our “map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV”. This made me think about how much we rely on Internet and how much of a worldwide crisis it would be if Internet was immediately taken away. Although later in his article he believes that programmers are only worried about finding “one best method” but I believe if the researcher is intent on exploring a wider view on what their looking for it is up to them. But then once again I have to agree with Carr that our brains are now trained to see an answer that looks legitimate and believe that answer because it’s on “Google” so why would it be wrong? Carr makes a lot of very valuable points but I would definitely have to read an article in defense before I could be convinced that the Internet is really brainwashing society.