Is Google Making Us Stupid?
In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, Carr argues that the internet is changing the process or way in which people think. In Carr’s opening paragraph he contrasts the difference in research methods before and after the internet. Carr states the before the internet research took people days to find information. Since the invention of the internet though research can take as little as a few minutes or hours with one search in the google search engine.
Carr also writes about his experience using Google as a means of research compared to the old painstaking way of research through books. Carr who used to slowly research through books now finds himself looking through articles and skimming through each one. Carr seems to suggest that the amount of information available seems to be chipping away at his “capacity for concentration and contemplation”. Carr states that “his mind expects to take in information the way it distributes it”. Carr refers to an article by referring to Brian Friedman’s article on how he himself can’t seem to able to read and retain information from longer articles.
Carr supports his thesis by also including a study done by the University College of London. In the five year study conducted by the University, researchers observed a “skimming activity” in people researching or reading articles on the Internet. This is the only outside source Carr uses to show how internet may be changing reading habits in people
Overall Carr sums up his point with a quote “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idom”. He reiterates that through different means of information, we will learn a new way of thinking.