is google making us stupid summary and response essay

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Summary

Summary & analysis of is google making us stupid by nicholas carr.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? was written by Nicholas Carr and published in The Atlantic in 2008. The article discusses the author’s personal experience and observations regarding how his reading and thinking patterns have changed due to his increased use of the internet, particularly search engines like Google. The article investigates the impact of internet use on cognition, concentrating on changes in reading habits and information processing. It raises concerns about the internet’s possible influence on deep reading and critical thinking skills.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Summary

The author raises concerns about the potential impact of internet usage on deep reading, interpretation of the text, and the formation of rich mental connections . He talks about how the human brain is malleable and how different intellectual devices, such as the internet, may influence our thinking processes. The article even draws parallels to historical examples, such as the advent of the mechanical clock, which influenced the conception of time and the way people thought.

The author begins by referencing a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” where the supercomputer HAL pleads with astronaut Dave Bowman to stop disconnecting its memory circuits, expressing a sense of loss and deterioration. The author then draws a parallel to his own experience , feeling that his mind is being changed by someone or something. He describes a shift in his thinking and difficulty with concentration, particularly when reading. He attributes this change to the extensive time spent online, where he searches, surfs, and gathers information from the Internet.

The author acknowledges the Internet’s benefits, such as quick access to large amounts of information, but also contends that it has a cost. He argues that the Internet is shaping the way he thinks and diminishing his capacity for concentration and contemplation. He describes a shift from deep reading to a more superficial style of reading that mirrors the rapid flow of information online. Many friends and acquaintances report similar experiences, struggling to stay focused on long pieces of writing.

The author cites Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist , who argues that reading is not an innate skill but something we learn and practice. Different technologies used for reading, such as alphabets and ideograms, shape our brain’s neural circuits differently. The author suggests that the circuits formed by Internet use will differ from those formed by reading books. They express concern that the Net’s emphasis on efficiency and immediacy may weaken our ability to deeply interpret and connect with the text. The author presents Friedrich Nietzsche’s adoption of a typewriter as an example of how a technological tool influenced his writing style. He argues that intellectual technologies shape our thinking and cognition. The clock, for instance, detached time from human events and created a different sense of reality. Similarly, the Internet is subsuming other intellectual technologies and transforming them into its image, scattering attention and diffusing concentration. Traditional media adapt to the Internet’s influence to meet the audience’s changing expectations.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Analysis

The author cites a study on online research habits that indicates a shift in reading habits characterized by rapid reading and quick browsing. He contends that the Internet’s emphasis on rapid data availability favors this practice, resulting in a loss of deep reading and comprehension . The author discusses the idea that intellectual technologies, such as the Internet, shape our thinking and cognition. He refers to the use of a typewriter by Friedrich Nietzsche as an example of how a technical item altered his writing style. This shows that the Internet has an impact on cognitive processes other than reading habits.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Context

To accurately describe the social, historical, and cultural context in which this article was likely written, we can consider some general factors and trends that were prevalent during the period leading up to 2021 when the knowledge cutoff of the model is set.

The reference to Friedrich Nietzsche adopting a typewriter serves to illustrate how historical figures have been influenced by intellectual technologies. It implies that the issues presented in the essay are not novel, but rather part of a larger historical debate on the link between technology and cognition.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Title

Overall, the title and subtitle are important because they draw the reader’s attention, provide a problem that is relevant and concerning, and set the tone for an investigation into the impact of the internet on our thinking and brain functioning.

How to Become a Writer Lorrie Moore Summary

The minority report | summary & analysis, related articles, the castle | summary and analysis, the indigo terror | summary and analysis, have you earned your tomorrow | summary and analysis, the minister’s black veil | summary & analysis, leave a reply cancel reply, adblock detected.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What the Internet is doing to our brains

An illustration of an "Internet Patrol" officer writing a ticket while someone stands in front of a "Minimum Speed" sign

“Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired ’s Clive Thompson has written , “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media , recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine , also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain . “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

How to Trick People Into Saving Money

abstract illustration with mouth, column, geometric shapes

The Dark Psychology of Social Networks

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”

As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization , the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”

The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation , the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “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.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936 , the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

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. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, The New York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.

More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management , was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.”

Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”

Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review , and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek , Brin said, “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.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”

Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it?

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus , Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading , as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay , the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”

I’m haunted by that scene in 2001 . What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001 , people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic .

About the Author

Nicholas G. Carr's 'Is Google Making us Stupid?': Summary and Response

Is Google Making Us Stupid Summary

In today's digital age, Google has become an integral part of our lives. It has transformed the way we search for information, connect with others, and navigate the world. However, there is a growing concern that Google is making us stupid. This essay aims to provide a summary of the arguments presented in the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr and explore the impact of Google on our cognitive abilities and the way we think.

Carr begins his article by sharing his personal experience of how he noticed a change in his own reading habits. He reveals that he finds it difficult to concentrate and deeply engage with longer texts, attributing this change to his extensive use of the internet and, in particular, Google. He argues that the internet, with its easy access to information and constant distractions, is rewiring our brains and altering the way we process information.

One of the key arguments Carr presents is that the internet promotes a culture of skimming and shallow reading. He suggests that the constant exposure to short, bite-sized information fragments on the internet has eroded our ability to engage in deep, focused reading. As a result, our attention spans have shortened, and we struggle to concentrate on lengthy or complex texts. This argument raises concerns about the impact of Google on our critical thinking skills and our ability to comprehend and analyze information in a meaningful way.

Moreover, Carr explores the idea that Google encourages a passive form of learning. With the vast amount of information readily available at our fingertips, we no longer feel the need to retain knowledge or engage in active mental processes. Instead, we rely on Google to provide us with instant answers, without truly understanding or internalizing the information. This argument raises questions about the long-term consequences of this passive learning approach and its impact on our intellectual growth.

However, it is important to note that Carr's argument is not without its critics. Some argue that the internet and Google, in fact, enhance our cognitive abilities by providing us with a wealth of information and facilitating connections with others. They argue that the internet is a tool that can be used to expand our knowledge and promote critical thinking if used responsibly. This counterargument suggests that it is not Google itself that is making us stupid, but rather our own choices and how we engage with the technology.

In conclusion, the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr explores the impact of Google on our cognitive abilities and the way we think. It raises concerns about the culture of skimming, shallow reading, and passive learning that the internet and Google have fostered. However, it is important to recognize that the impact of Google on our intelligence is a complex and multifaceted issue. While it is undeniable that Google has changed the way we access and process information, it is up to us to use this tool responsibly and maintain our critical thinking skills in the digital age.

Want to Make Your AI-Generated Essays Undetectable

Related Essays

Is Google Making Us Stupid Nicholas Carr Summary
Response to Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Essay
Is Google Making Us Stupid? By Nicholas Carr
Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr Essay
Is Google Making Us Stupid By Nicholas Carr

In his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", published in The Atlantic in 2008, Nicholas Carr explores the impact of the internet and, more specifically, Google, on the way our minds work. Carr presents the idea that the internet, with its vast wealth of information and the way it encourages quick browsing and skimming, may be altering the way we think and process information. He argues that our ability to concentrate and contemplate deeply may be diminishing due to the constant distractions and the way information is presented online. Carr draws from history, philosophy, and cognitive science to support his argument, making this a thought-provoking piece that raises important questions about the impact of technology on our minds. Carr begins by recounting his own experiences and the changes he has noticed in his reading and thinking patterns since he started using the internet more extensively. He describes how he used to be able to immerse himself in long articles and books, but now finds it difficult to concentrate on reading for extended periods. Carr attributes this change to the way the internet has trained his brain to seek out quick information and to skim through material rather than engaging in deep, focused reading. He suggests that this shift in reading habits may be affecting not just individuals, but the way society as a whole processes information and engages with knowledge. Throughout the article, Carr references historical figures and their experiences with new technologies to illustrate that concerns about the impact of technology on the mind are not new. From Plato's worries about the impact of writing on memory to the invention of the printing press, each new technology has brought about changes in the way we think and process information. Carr uses these historical examples to argue that our current concerns about the internet's impact on cognition are valid and worthy of serious consideration. Additionally, Carr delves into cognitive science to support his argument about the impact of the internet on our mental processes. He discusses research that suggests the way we read online, with its emphasis on quick scanning and jumping between links, may be rewiring our brains and affecting our ability to engage in deep, sustained thought. Carr's exploration of the scientific evidence adds weight to his argument and raises important questions about the long-term implications of our digital habits. In conclusion, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr is a thought-provoking exploration of the impact of the internet, and Google in particular, on the way we think and process information. Carr presents a compelling case that the internet may be altering our cognitive processes, affecting our ability to concentrate deeply and engage with knowledge in a meaningful way. By drawing from history, philosophy, and cognitive science, Carr provides a well-rounded argument that raises important questions about the impact of technology on our minds, making this article a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about the digital age and its effects on human cognition....

Technology Companies
Cyber Ethics and Digital Citizenship

Rhetorical Analysis Of Is Google Making Us Stupid

In Nicholas Carr's thought-provoking essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he delves into the ways in which the internet, particularly Google, has impacted human cognition and the way we process information. Carr argues that the internet's constant availability of information has led to a decline in deep, focused reading and critical thinking skills. He uses rhetorical strategies such as anecdotes, expert opinions, and historical references to support his argument. One of Carr's primary rhetorical devices is the use of personal anecdotes to illustrate his point. He describes his own struggles with concentration and focus, attributing them to his increased reliance on the internet for information. By sharing his personal experience, Carr appeals to the reader's emotions and makes his argument more relatable. This technique allows him to establish a connection with the audience and strengthen his overall argument. Furthermore, Carr employs expert opinions to lend credibility to his argument. He references various studies and quotes from neuroscientists and psychologists to support his claims about the impact of internet usage on the brain. By incorporating these authoritative voices, Carr strengthens his argument and convinces the reader of the validity of his claims. This appeal to authority adds weight to his argument and enhances his credibility as a writer. Additionally, Carr utilizes historical references to provide context for his argument. He compares the invention of the printing press to the advent of the internet, highlighting the similarities in their transformative effects on society. By drawing parallels between these two historical events, Carr emphasizes the significance of the internet's impact on human cognition. This rhetorical strategy allows him to situate his argument within a broader historical framework and underscore its importance in understanding contemporary society. In conclusion, Nicholas Carr employs a variety of rhetorical strategies in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" to effectively argue his point about the internet's impact on human cognition. Through personal anecdotes, expert opinions, and historical references, Carr engages the reader and persuasively makes his case. While his argument may provoke discomfort or resistance in some, it ultimately serves as a critical examination of the ways in which technology shapes our minds and our society....

Essay on “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “Get Smarter”

In today's digital age, the impact of technology on our cognitive abilities and information consumption habits has become a subject of much debate. Nicholas Carr's essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" delves into this issue, examining how the internet, and Google in particular, may be reshaping our brains and altering the way we think. Carr argues that the constant exposure to online distractions and the ease of accessing vast amounts of information may be diminishing our capacity for deep, focused reading and critical thinking. One of Carr's primary concerns is the phenomenon of "skimming" or "browsing" through information online, rather than engaging in sustained, concentrated reading. With the abundance of articles, blog posts, and social media updates available at our fingertips, Carr suggests that we have become accustomed to consuming information in bite-sized chunks, rather than delving deeply into complex texts. This trend, he argues, has led to a decline in our ability to concentrate for extended periods and to engage in the kind of deep, analytical thinking that is necessary for comprehension and synthesis of complex ideas. Moreover, Carr highlights the role of technology in shaping the way we process information and retain knowledge. With the rise of search engines like Google, information retrieval has become nearly instantaneous, leading to what Carr describes as a "just-in-time" model of learning. Instead of committing information to memory or internalizing knowledge, we rely on external sources to provide us with answers to our queries, leading to a shallower understanding of the material and a decreased capacity for critical thinking and problem-solving. However, it is essential to recognize that the impact of technology on cognition is not entirely negative. While Carr raises valid concerns about the potential drawbacks of excessive internet use, it is also worth acknowledging the myriad ways in which technology has enriched our lives and expanded our access to information. Google, for example, has democratized knowledge and facilitated unprecedented levels of connectivity and collaboration. Moreover, the internet has opened up new avenues for creativity, learning, and self-expression, empowering individuals to pursue their passions and share their ideas with the world. In conclusion, Carr's essay prompts us to reflect critically on the ways in which technology, particularly the internet and search engines like Google, may be shaping our cognitive processes and information consumption habits. While there are legitimate concerns about the potential negative effects of excessive internet use on concentration, critical thinking, and memory, it is also essential to recognize the benefits that technology has brought to our lives. By maintaining a balanced approach to technology usage and cultivating mindfulness in our online activities, we can harness the power of the internet while mitigating its potential drawbacks....

Digital Art Trends

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In today's digital age, the internet has become an indispensable tool for accessing information. Google, the world's most popular search engine, has revolutionized the way we gather knowledge. However, there is a growing concern that our reliance on Google and similar platforms is altering the way our brains process information, leading to a decline in critical thinking and intellectual depth. One of the main arguments against Google's influence is the phenomenon known as the "Google effect." This term refers to the tendency of individuals to rely on the internet as an external memory source, rather than retaining information internally. With the vast amount of information available at our fingertips, there is less incentive to commit facts to memory. As a result, our ability to recall information independently may be diminishing, leading to a reliance on Google for even the most basic facts. Furthermore, the instant gratification provided by Google's search results may be contributing to a decline in patience and attention spans. In the past, individuals were accustomed to spending time researching a topic thoroughly, delving into books and articles to gain a comprehensive understanding. However, with Google, information is delivered instantaneously, often in bite-sized pieces. This may lead to a preference for quick answers over in-depth analysis, ultimately affecting our ability to engage deeply with complex ideas. Additionally, the format of online content, particularly on platforms like Google, tends to be fragmented and easily digestible. Articles are often structured with short paragraphs, bullet points, and attention-grabbing headlines to cater to the modern reader's short attention span. While this may make information more accessible, it also encourages skimming and superficial reading rather than deep comprehension. As a result, individuals may be less inclined to engage critically with the material they encounter online. In conclusion, while Google and the internet have undoubtedly made information more accessible, there are concerns about the impact of this accessibility on our cognitive abilities. The convenience of instant access to information may come at a cost, leading to a decline in memory retention, attention spans, and critical thinking skills. As we continue to navigate the digital landscape, it is essential to be mindful of the potential consequences of our reliance on technology and to actively cultivate habits that promote deep thinking and intellectual engagement....

Digital Devices

Rhetorical Analysis of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" In Nicholas Carr's thought-provoking essay, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he delves into the profound impact of technology, particularly the internet, on human cognition. Carr raises poignant questions about the consequences of the digital age, pondering whether our reliance on search engines like Google is altering the way we think and process information. Throughout the essay, Carr employs a variety of rhetorical strategies to engage readers and convey his argument effectively. One of Carr's most compelling rhetorical devices is his use of personal anecdotes and experiences. By sharing his own struggles with concentration and deep reading, Carr establishes a sense of credibility and relatability with his audience. He describes how his own attention span has dwindled in the era of constant online distractions, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences with technology. This personal touch humanizes Carr's argument, making it more accessible and persuasive. Additionally, Carr employs vivid imagery and descriptive language to paint a vivid picture of the cognitive shifts he believes are occurring in society. He compares the human mind to a computer, suggesting that the constant barrage of information from the internet is reprogramming our brains to operate more like machines. This metaphorical language serves to underscore the gravity of Carr's concerns, highlighting the potentially dystopian future he envisions if we continue down this path of technological dependency. Furthermore, Carr incorporates expert testimony and research findings to bolster his argument. He cites studies from neuroscientists and psychologists to support his claims about the impact of internet usage on cognitive processes such as memory and attention. By grounding his argument in empirical evidence, Carr appeals to logos, or logical reasoning, strengthening the credibility of his assertions and compelling readers to take his concerns seriously. In conclusion, Nicholas Carr's rhetorical analysis of the effects of technology on human cognition in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" offers a thought-provoking critique of the digital age. Through the strategic use of personal anecdotes, vivid imagery, and expert testimony, Carr effectively engages readers and persuades them to consider the profound implications of our increasing reliance on the internet. As society continues to grapple with the consequences of technological advancement, Carr's essay serves as a timely reminder to critically evaluate the impact of these innovations on the way we think and interact with the world around us....

Fashion and Dress

In the digital age, where information is just a click away, the question of whether Google is making us stupid has garnered significant attention. While some argue that the ease of access to information has led to a decline in critical thinking and deep reading, others contend that it has revolutionized the way we process information and enhanced our cognitive abilities. One of the primary concerns raised is the impact of the internet, particularly search engines like Google, on our attention spans. With the constant influx of information and distractions online, many worry that our ability to focus for extended periods has diminished. Nicholas Carr, in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", suggests that the internet encourages a scattered, superficial way of thinking, making it difficult for individuals to engage in deep, contemplative reading. He points to his own struggles with concentration after years of online browsing, indicating a potential cognitive shift brought about by the internet age. Furthermore, critics argue that the reliance on search engines like Google has led to a phenomenon known as "information overload." With vast amounts of information available at our fingertips, individuals may feel overwhelmed and struggle to discern credible sources from misinformation. This, in turn, could lead to a decline in critical thinking skills as people become accustomed to skimming through articles and relying on snippets of information rather than delving into complex texts and ideas. However, proponents of the internet's impact on cognition argue that it has not made us stupid but rather has transformed the way we process information. They suggest that the ability to quickly access a wealth of information online has empowered individuals to become more efficient researchers and problem-solvers. Rather than memorizing facts, people can now focus on developing critical thinking skills and synthesizing information from various sources—a crucial skill in today's fast-paced world. Moreover, the internet has facilitated new forms of communication and collaboration, allowing individuals to connect with others globally and share knowledge and ideas in ways that were previously unimaginable. Platforms like Google Docs and collaborative online forums have revolutionized the way people work and learn together, fostering creativity and innovation. In conclusion, while the advent of the internet and search engines like Google has undoubtedly changed the way we consume and process information, it is up for debate whether it is making us stupid. While some argue that it has led to a decline in attention spans and critical thinking skills, others contend that it has empowered individuals to become more efficient and creative thinkers. Ultimately, the impact of Google on our cognitive abilities depends on how we choose to use and engage with the vast resources available online....

Lifestyle & Interests

IS Google Making us Stupid

Is Google Making Us Stupid? In the era of rapid technological advancement, the influence of the internet, particularly Google, on our cognitive processes has become a subject of considerable debate. Some argue that the easy accessibility of information through search engines like Google has led to a decline in our ability to focus, think critically, and retain knowledge. This phenomenon, often referred to as the "Google effect," raises questions about the impact of technology on our brains and intellectual capabilities. One of the primary concerns surrounding the influence of Google is its effect on our attention spans. With a vast amount of information available at our fingertips, the tendency to skim through content rather than engage in deep reading has become prevalent. Nicholas Carr, in his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" suggests that the constant exposure to online distractions has shortened our attention spans and made it difficult for us to concentrate on lengthy texts. As a result, our ability to engage in sustained, focused thought may be diminishing. Furthermore, the reliance on search engines like Google for information retrieval has raised questions about the depth of our understanding. Instead of delving into complex topics and synthesizing information from various sources, individuals may resort to quick searches for answers. This surface-level engagement with information can lead to a superficial understanding of concepts and hinder critical thinking skills. As Carr notes, the convenience of Google may discourage individuals from engaging in the cognitive processes necessary for deep comprehension and analysis. Moreover, the constant availability of information through Google may contribute to a decline in our memory retention abilities. With the assurance that information can be easily accessed whenever needed, individuals may be less inclined to commit facts to memory. This overreliance on external sources for information retrieval can lead to a weakening of our memory muscles, potentially impairing our ability to recall information when offline. Consequently, the convenience of Google may come at the cost of our cognitive functions, including memory formation and retention. In conclusion, while Google and other search engines offer unparalleled convenience and access to information, their influence on our cognitive processes cannot be overlooked. The ease of access to information may lead to shortened attention spans, superficial understanding, and decreased memory retention. As we continue to navigate the digital age, it is essential to critically examine the impact of technology on our brains and take proactive measures to maintain cognitive health and critical thinking skills in an increasingly digitized world....

Is Google Making Us Stupid Essay

The Impact of Google on Cognitive Abilities In today's digital age, the internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, revolutionizing the way we access information and interact with the world around us. Google, as the dominant search engine, has played a significant role in shaping our online experiences. However, as we rely more heavily on Google and other search engines for instant access to information, questions have arisen about the impact of this reliance on our cognitive abilities. This essay explores whether Google is making us "stupid" by altering our thinking patterns and attention spans. One argument in favor of the notion that Google is making us "stupid" is the phenomenon of information overload. With a vast amount of information available at our fingertips, users may become overwhelmed and struggle to focus on deep, sustained thought. The convenience of quickly finding answers to our questions may lead to a preference for superficial browsing rather than engaging in critical analysis and reflection. As a result, our ability to concentrate for extended periods and engage in complex reasoning may diminish over time. Furthermore, the ease of access to information provided by Google may lead to a decline in our ability to retain knowledge. Instead of committing information to memory, individuals may rely on external sources such as search engines to retrieve information as needed. This reliance on external sources may weaken our memory recall abilities and hinder our capacity for deep learning and understanding. In essence, Google may be transforming us into "information processors" rather than independent thinkers. However, it is essential to acknowledge that Google also offers numerous benefits in terms of facilitating access to information and promoting knowledge sharing. The ability to quickly search for information can enhance productivity, foster collaboration, and enable individuals to stay informed about current events and developments. Moreover, Google's algorithms are continually evolving to provide more relevant and accurate search results, enhancing the overall user experience. In conclusion, while Google has undoubtedly revolutionized the way we access information, its influence on our cognitive abilities is a subject of debate. While some argue that Google is making us "stupid" by fostering a culture of instant gratification and information overload, others contend that it offers valuable opportunities for learning and knowledge dissemination. Ultimately, the impact of Google on our cognitive abilities depends on how we choose to engage with and leverage this powerful tool in our daily lives....

Cybersecurity and National Security
Global Economy

Can't find the essay examples you need?

Use the search box below to find your desired essay examples.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

24 pages • 48 minutes read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Essay Analysis

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

“I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

Carr opens his essay with a personal anecdote regarding the shift in his manner of thinking and the quality of his intellectual engagement with texts. He contrasts his newly-truncated attention span against the way he used to process texts at a more leisurely pace and with greater subtlety. Carr’s choice to begin with a personal anecdote rather than hard-hitting data makes his essay more immediately relatable. It invites readers to examine their own intellectual life for similarities with Carr’s—and Carr banks on the proliferation and relatability of experiences like his to hook his reader. If he ingratiates himself to the reader with a point of shared experience, he can more effectively mount his argument.

“As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Related Titles

By Nicholas Carr

The Shallows

Featured Collections

Essays & Speeches

View Collection

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — Review of Nicholas Carr’s ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid’

Review of Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid'

Categories: Impact of Technology Negative Impact of Technology

About this sample

Words: 1487 |

Published: Apr 8, 2022

Words: 1487 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Works Cited

Carr, N. (2008, July). Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Goel, V., & Grafman, J. (2000). Are we less intelligent than we were 100 years ago? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(5), 176-181.
Greenfield, S. (2009). The mind and brain of short-term memory. Scientific American, 301(5), 50-55.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. NYU Press.
Johnson, S. (2010). The medium is the metaphor. In Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter (pp. 77-103). Penguin Books.
Liu, Z. (2005). Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years. Journal of Documentation, 61(6), 700-712.
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT Press.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Routledge.
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the internet is hiding from you. Penguin.
Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. Harper Perennial.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 964 words

3 pages / 1329 words

2 pages / 895 words

3 pages / 1670 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Review of Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid' Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Impact of Technology

Mornings at my grandparent’s house are a perfect example of how the different generations can go about accomplishing the same task in very diverse ways. My grandmother places the mail on the table and begins making a grocery [...]

The internet is an ubiquitous presence in modern society, revolutionizing the way we access information, connect with others, and conduct business. However, this technological marvel also has its negative implications. In this [...]

In conclusion, the synthesis of Marc and Carly’s arguments suggests that technology has had both positive and negative consequences for communication. While Marc argues that it has had a negative impact, Carly argues that it has [...]

Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, have been a topic of great interest and debate in recent years due to their potential to revolutionize the way we travel. These vehicles have the ability to navigate roads [...]

The average kid in today’s society receives his or her first phone at the age of ten. Using technology at an early age can cause an unhealthy mental and physical impact on a child’s growth and development. Excessive screen [...]

Many teachers believe that a smartphone is nothing but a distraction tool. As many people think that it is true, there is also the idea that a smartphone could be the biggest learning tool in our century. January 9th, 2007 was [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

is google making us stupid summary and response essay

Whitepapers
Newsletters
Advertising
Login/Register
New Product Awards
Hybrid Learning
Networking/Wireless
Digital Transformation
Tech Tactics in Education

Share this Page

del.icio.us
Printable Format
E-Mail this page

Response to Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'

By Trent Batson

Criticism of the Web most often questions whether we are becoming more superficial and scattered in our thinking. In the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr published "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" ( http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google ). Like other critics, he sees change as loss and not as gain. But, his own criticism is superficial and misses the humanizing impact of Web 2.0.

Nicholas Carr is an important voice today in pointing to the nervousness that many people have about technology. He recently published The Big Switch; Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google , which is in its seventh printing. His blog is well worth reading regularly: http://www.roughtype.com/ . His views are carefully constructed and researched. He is a skilled writer and is widely read.

And, academics often express the same concerns Carr doesin his Atlantic article. Our concerns are about the qualitative differences in how net-gen students think and write and learn. Nicholas Carr is giving voice to these concerns. This article is about one skill that he believes is being eroded, that of reading:

"I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

He says this change is because of all the time he spends online. As a writer, he finds the Web a valuable tool, but he thinks it's having a bad effect on his concentration. He says "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." He refers to a 5-year study in the UK, which found that people visiting their sites "exhibited 'a form of skimming activity,' hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they'd already visited."

Carr admits that we, as a culture, read a lot more because of the Web, but laments that "our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." And he highlights a quote from an essay by the playwright Richard Foreman:

"I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense, and 'cathedral-like' structure of the highly educated and articulate personality--a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) there placement of complex inner density with a new kind of self--evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available.'"

As an advocate for technology in higher education over the past 20 years, I've heard similar warnings for years. Indeed, some people reading this article may believe that Carr has hit the nail on the head. There is no question that our habits are changing: The Web has captured our attention and is now the default starting point for almost all work. The Web is different in almost all aspects from a book. Printed books have contained the essential truths of humanity for half a millennium. The Web is where we look for knowledge that usually exists not in final, authoritative, single-author text blocks but in the aggregate of wisdom from many sites.

« previous
next »

Most Popular Articles
Most Emailed Articles

Texas A&M to Boost Parking Operations with Private LTE Network

Coursera introduces new gen ai skills training and credentials, amazon program offers free ai tools to public sector organizations, cloud ai services slide back to rock bottom in gartner 'hype cycle', tech giants form open source ai security group, ditch the diy approach to ai on campus, learning engineering: new profession or transformational process.

Artificial Intelligence
Networking & Wireless

Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Manage Subscriptions
Magazine Archives
Licensing/Reprints
Terms of Use
List Rental

We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. By continuing we’ll assume you’re on board with our cookie policy

Is Google Making Us Stupid: Summary and Response

Word count: 1131
Category: Brain Google Is Google Making Us Stupid

A limited time offer! Get a custom sample essay written according to your requirements urgent 3h delivery guaranteed

Over history technology has changed mankind’s overall culture. From clocks to computers the use of electronics and tools is occurring every day in almost all situations. In Carr’s article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” he introduces the idea how the internet is changing our lives by making us mentally process information differently from the past, based off previous changes in history. Carr explains how we think less deeply and rely on quick facts, versus using critical thinking and research. Also he explains how our brain is malleable, and may be changed by the internet’s impression. Lastly Carr talks about what the internet may become in the future, and how it could make us more like computers. I believe Carr’s ideas on the way the internet is shaping lives are valid because the proof is all around us. (Carr)

Carr believes the internet makes us less deep thinkers due to its easiness. He elaborates on how we only have to ask a question and there isn’t any lengthy research, becoming like a pancake. Since on the internet we gain a lot of spread out information, but not in depth knowledge on the specific topic, becoming spread out and thin intellectually, like a pancake. Carr says, we no longer have to analyze information and understand it ourselves, but instead rely on simple answers. The simplicity and easiness of finding an answer is changing deep thought, to shallow thinking. (Carr)

I agree with Carr that we are becoming shallow thinking people because the internet makes research quick and simple. I relate this to the phrase “Just Google it”, this is commonly used when we don’t want to research or think in depth about a topic and we rely on the internet and other people’s experiences to educate ourselves. What this ultimately does is change us from critical thinkers into lazy-like typing zombies that believe almost anything online since we no longer rely on ourselves to investigate. I see this not only in myself, but in many of my peers. Carr could be correct, society may become more and more simple minded and leave extended thinking in the past with paper text.

In “Is Google Making us stupid”, Carr explains how the brain is malleable and how the internet might be shaping it by literally rewiring the brains network. Carr gives a brief example of how neurons can be made and broke depending on what things shape the way things are done. By being used to instant searching and internet preferences, the brain reprograms itself in being used that certain way. He thinks by using the internet so much, we will become more and more objective and quick thinkers, and ultimately emotionless computers. He also gives examples of how the clock and typewriter changed our way of thinking in the past. Adapting this way will rewire thought processes and continue to dictate how we act. Carr’s theory may be more obvious as we continue to be reliant on technology. (Carr)

Again I agree with Carr’s theory on changing the brain’s thought processes because the proof is in the history of mankind. When Carr stated the fact of how the clock had made a huge impact on how we go about our day, I realized its significance. Modern culture is completely shaped by time, when we eat, sleep, work, and much more. I have seen this first hand when I worked with Native Americans. They do not rely on time frame, and kind of live, work, and do as they feel and the setting of day. Knowing the clock has made such a huge impact on our lives, I plainly see how it changed our brains thought pattern. We have wired ourselves mentally to wake up on time, and what we will do. Again I have to agree since scientific research has shown that the brain rewires its self, constantly making new, and breaking old neuron channels. Seeing this specific pattern gives proof to how internet is taking the place of the clock in a modern way. Google continues to grow and change the way things are perceived on a daily basis because the internet is used in everything anymore.

Ultimately Carr believes we are headed to a future where we all think like a “HAL” computer. He says: “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (Carr). Piecing his entire article together leads Carr to believe we are progressing into a computer-like culture. A culture where our emotions become artificial and task orientated. Becoming “Pancake people” and knowing a lot pertaining to everything yet little about each topic. He fears we will think collectively and quick thinking for ourselves, again becoming more like a computer system. The more our society becomes reliant on technology, the more people become like the systems they use.

Lastly I do not absolutely agree with Carr’s complete concept of where we are going because I think human kind will always have human nature, and primal instinct. I think of it this way, technology is fueled through electricity, electricity is not a natural element we can just accumulate. Knowing this, if someday in the future all power fails along with the internet and technology we rely on, we may begin to regress backwards and forget about the habitual use of the internet. When everything powers down, man will not. Human nature is to fight, survive, live, and love. However I do believe as we use the internet the more we act like it, but I don’t think it’s going to drastically change natural habits. Life style is changed through the internet, but we are still human.

The more the internet is used, the more it dictates our culture. Look around electronics are everywhere and constantly being upgraded. As time goes on the more everyone relies on networks like the internet. It may change our process of life and thought, and may even adapt us into the new era of mankind. Carr has brought much of this information into perspective and maybe if everyone would look around it is possible to see how society has progressed so much since the birth of the internet. People can now learn instantly, train, communicate, and work with everyone on the planet. This alone has advanced, changed mostly everything done in our current culture. Being human will always be the essence of actions throughout life, but the internet has changed the way we live. From Google, GPS and Facebook; everyone plans, works, and seizes the day being surrounded by these technologies.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Magazine, August 2008. Web. 29 January 2013.

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Metaphors and wordplay, rhetorical questions, the criticism of the argument.

Bibliography

The current paper is devoted to analyzing the article called Is Google Making Us Stupid? Written by Nicholas Carr. It was published in The Atlantis online journal. The analysis will be centered on the rhetorical means which help the author convey the main idea and attract the readers’ attention to the particular argument. Considering the article’s publicist style, the author’s central aim is to encourage specific thoughts in readers’ minds. The statement, which is highlighted by such rhetorical means as metaphors, wordplay, examples, and ethical questions, is built upon the idea that the internet changes the capacity of the brain-damaging some of the memory functions.

The first rhetorical tool used to strengthen the negative effect of the internet on the human brain is a metaphor. Carr uses metaphors invoking the rhetorical impact of directly referring to one thing while referring to another: “brains as operating like clockwork”. The author highlights that people lose humanity, becoming similar to machines. The author also highlights who is to be blamed for such actions through another metaphor: “…Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church”. This rhetoric tool makes the text more emotional and thought-provoking. The author must cause the particular emotional response of the reader because many of his observations and opinions are personal. Precisely for such an audience’s response, the author allocates another rethorictoolL wordplay. In order to highlight that the author does not try to force his opinion, the following wordplay is used: “So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism”. However, the usage of wordplay also equalizes the author with other people, which makes his position even more reliable. Of wordplay also

The examples are one of the most effective rhetorical means of helping the author to support the main idea. The author allocates two types of examples: statistical and personal. Statistical examples evolved as scientific and academic support for the author’s main argument. Such a method makes the text more supported by valid s scientific institutes: “according to the Harvard Business Review.” Moreover, besides the statistical and academic examples, Carr builds contact with the reader through personal examples. Not only the author describes his personal experience but also allocates the opinions of famous bloggers: “He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because…”. By implementing such an example, the author notes that the reader, author, and other people mentioned in the narration are united: “I’m not the only one.” As a result of examples integration, the author makes the argument well supported by two different types of data. Such an approach is rational for supporting the argument based on the personal point of view which is expressed in the article.

Not only the examples can improve the sense of presence and unity for the reader. Another rhetorical tool to attract the audience’s attention to the author’s argument is rhetorical questions. Most often, rhetorical questions are used to emphasize the significance of a statement and draw the attention of the listener or reader to a particular problem. The author, in this context, uses a rhetorical question to highlight key phrases and involve the audience in the process of reflection: “Where does it end?” Moreover, the article’s name represents the rhetorical question. By posing questions, Carr follows the communicative intention of narration: to awaken the audience’s consciousness regarding the changes in the brain caused by the internet. In other words, the provocation within the structure of rhetorical questions strengthens the author’s argumentation, highlighting the problem’s significance.

Considering mentioned rhetorical means used by the author, the text can be called appealing. The main argument is well supported by personal, scientific, and observational experiences. The method of narration, which includes various rhetorical means, is thought-provoking, helping the audience to understand the position better. Another function of the rhetoric tools here is the need to establish an emotional connection and unity between the author and readers. The mentioned examples strengthen the argument of the author by improving the supportive basis (examples) and emotional effect (rhetoric question, metaphors, and wordplay).

Concluding the analysis of the article, it can be stated that the author’s argument is well-supported by using rhetorical tools. Metaphors and wordplay were used to create the feeling of unity with the readers and make the text more appealing. The creation of the comparison image makes the text more effective, which helps to achieve the needed emotional reaction from the audience. The examples serve as excellent argumentation bases providing diverse support for the primary author’s idea. The rhetorical question was used by Carr in order to provoke the reader’s consciousness to agree with the author’s opinion. The argument is solid due to the providing many examples and supporting facts, both scientific and public. The only drawback of the article is the lack of structural thought expression. The author provides no highlighted point moving from one theme to another, disturbing the text.

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, 2008.

Rhetorical Analysis of Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition
M. L. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech Delivery
Emily Carr’s Legacy in Canadian Art History
Google and Stupidity
“The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians” by C. Carr
Greta Thunberg's 2019 Climate Action Speech Techniques
Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" Literary Analysis
Rhetoric in Obama’s 2008 Speech on Racism
Rhetorical Analysis of “On Being a Cripple” by Mairs
The Philosophy and Rhetoric Journal Analysis
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, August 30). "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/is-google-making-us-stupid-article-by-carr-rhetorical-analysis/

""Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis." IvyPanda , 30 Aug. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/is-google-making-us-stupid-article-by-carr-rhetorical-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis'. 30 August.

IvyPanda . 2023. ""Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis." August 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/is-google-making-us-stupid-article-by-carr-rhetorical-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis." August 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/is-google-making-us-stupid-article-by-carr-rhetorical-analysis/.

IvyPanda . ""Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis." August 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/is-google-making-us-stupid-article-by-carr-rhetorical-analysis/.

IMAGES

≫ Is Google Making Us Dumb Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
Google Is Making Us Stupid Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
Why Google Making Us Stupid? Essay Example
Critical Response on "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr
Ethos, Pathos and Logos in "Is Google Making Us Stupid" Article
(PDF) How Stupid Is Google Making Us?

VIDEO

The Summary Response Essay
Essay on Google in English
Is Google Making Us Stupid The Impact of Technology on Memory
IS INTERNET MAKING US STUPID DEBATE IN AGAINST RIYA SANORE CLASS XI SPS #awardwinning #speaker
English 1301: Summary & Response Essay

COMMENTS

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Summary and Study Guide
The essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was written by Nicholas Carr. It was originally published in The Atlantic's July/August 2008 issue. The essay stirred much debate, and in 2010, Carr published an extended version of the essay in book form, entitled The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Critical Response on "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr
To begin, in Is Google Making Us Stupid, in Carr's whole argument that the internet is making us stupid is easily refuted when looking at the resources available to us now. We have Wikipedia, online school and library databases, even college course all being served on the web.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? Essay Analysis
Analysis: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". In this essay, Carr asserts that the Internet, rather than Google specifically or exclusively, is in the process of revolutionizing human consciousness and cognition. For Carr, this is a negative revolution that threatens to evacuate human intellectual inquiry of its nuance, and to squeeze human ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Google is a widely used search engine across the internet. It is fundamental to note that although technology is essential in the context of the society, it comes with fear of deteriorating human development in some way. In this paper, I seek to argue in favor of the statement that Google is not making us stupid.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? Summary
Summary & Analysis of Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr. Is Google Making Us Stupid? was written by Nicholas Carr and published in The Atlantic in 2008. The article discusses the author's personal experience and observations regarding how his reading and thinking patterns have changed due to his increased use of the internet ...
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr Essay
Summary. Nicholas Carr, in his article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" mainly discusses the basis and impact of the way the Internet affects or impacts our reading, reasoning, and writing habits as well as the way our brains are trying to adapt to the changing times in the media industry (Carr para. 3). Carr employs the use of specific ...
Summary of "Is Google Making Us Stupid" by Nicholas Carr
In conclusion, "Is Google Making Us Stupid" raises important questions about the impact of the internet on our cognitive abilities. Carr's article highlights the potential negative effects of the internet on our attention span, memory, and critical thinking skills. While the internet has revolutionized the way we access information, it is ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid; A Response
Feb 27, 2017. 9. In his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid," published by the Atlantic in 2008, Nicholas Carr makes the argument that due to the instant gratification of curiosity for ...
PDF Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?The Internet has put the world's knowledge at our fingertips, but according to Nicholas Carr, it might be chan. ing us in fundamental ways. Read the excerpt from "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and answe. Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr1 "Dave, stop. stop, will you? stop, D. ve. will you stop, Dave?" So the ...
Rhetoric in "Is Google Making Us Stupid" by Carr Essay
Nicholas Carr's powerful essay called "Is Google Making Us Stupid" is an interesting piece of writing that persuaded readers to take a long and hard look on the Internet's impact on the human brain. An overview of the essay revealed the application of a careful appeal to the reader's emotions, the establishment of the writer's ...
Is Google Making us Stupid?
What is more, when it concerns an argumentative essay on the effects of technology, Nicolas Carr's article "Is Google Making us Stupid" is a must-read source. Here, I give a short summary of Carr's argument and show how you can cite it in your essay depending on the position you take. Therefore, I give another source, which can be used ...
Nicholas G. Carr's 'Is Google Making us Stupid?': Summary and Response
Nicholas Carr's essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" delves into this issue, examining how the internet, and Google in particular, may be reshaping our brains and altering the way we think. Carr argues that the constant exposure to online distractions and the ease of accessing vast amounts of information may be diminishing our capacity for deep ...
Nicholas G. Carr's 'Is Google Making us Stupid?': Summary ...
In "Is Google Making us stupid", Carr explains how the brain is malleable and how the internet might be shaping it by literally rewiring the brains network. Carr gives a brief example of how neurons can be made and broke depending on what things shape the way things are done. By being used to instant searching and internet preferences, the ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid? Important Quotes
Important Quotes. "I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case ...
Review of Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid'
The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid" is written by Nicholas Carr published in the July/August 2008. Carr zealously asserts that the internet is making us stupid and revels of how the using of Web has made changes to our overall thinking and attention span. He introduces his arguments by using the research and experience such as ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
The constant use of the Internet necessarily leads to changes in the functioning of the human brain. Surfing the Internet makes intellectual activity superficial, and thus, the skill necessary for a modern person to quickly and regularly browse sites leads to the fact that the human brain gradually loses its ability to deep and systemic thinking.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains! (alternatively Is Google Making Us Stoopid?) is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr, and is highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition.It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic magazine as a six-page cover story. [1] Carr's main argument is that the Internet might have ...
Response to Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'
Academics sometimes express concern or nervousness over how commonly used technologies like the Web, the Internet, and social software may affect information habits and even the way net-gen students read, write, think, and learn. In a 2008 Atlantic article Nicholas Carr came right out and asked, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' Here, Web 2.0 editor Trent Batson responds to the question.
Is Google Making Us Stupid (Free Essay Sample)
Is Google Making Us Stupid (Essay Sample) This is a free essay sample available for all students. If you are looking where to buy pre written essays on the topic "Is Google Making Us Stupid", browse our private essay samples. The Search Engine and the Human Brain: A Summary and Response Essay on Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid: Summary and Response
In "Is Google Making us stupid", Carr explains how the brain is malleable and how the internet might be shaping it by literally rewiring the brains network. Carr gives a brief example of how neurons can be made and broke depending on what things shape the way things are done. By being used to instant searching and internet preferences, the ...
Rhetoric of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Carr
Introduction. The current paper is devoted to analyzing the article called Is Google Making Us Stupid? Written by Nicholas Carr. It was published in The Atlantis online journal. The analysis will be centered on the rhetorical means which help the author convey the main idea and attract the readers' attention to the particular argument.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Summary

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Summary

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Analysis

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Context

Is Google Making Us Stupid? | Title

How to Become a Writer Lorrie Moore Summary

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Recommended Reading

How to Trick People Into Saving Money

The Dark Psychology of Social Networks

About the Author

Nicholas G. Carr's 'Is Google Making us Stupid?': Summary and Response

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Important Quotes

Related Titles

Featured Collections

Review of Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid'

Works Cited

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Impact of Technology

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

Share this Page

Response to Nicholas Carr's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'

Texas A&M to Boost Parking Operations with Private LTE Network

Is Google Making Us Stupid: Summary and Response

Related Topics

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Article by Carr: Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Introduction

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS