Does the Internet Make You Dumber

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A Critical Review of “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?” Critical Review 2 Introduction Nicholas Carr’s 2010 article titled “Does the Internet Make You Dumber” is an attempt to shadow the usefulness of the internet as a whole in a negative light. This short article, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, makes a fervid bid to discredit the internet and persuade individuals that we as a society were smarter before we began relying so heavily on the internet as an avenue to gain information. Carr manages to adequately present and support his very one-sided view of the argument without attempting to make room for a counter argument at all. I personally am of the opinion that Carr is being short sighted; he is beginning with a conclusion and bending the narrative to support his point of view. Summary It is a difficult task to summarize Carr’s article while including the sort of emotional one-sidedness he presents in the full text of the article. The short article is packed with references to studies performed by prominent universities and research groups, all of which contend that the internet is stripping the ability to think critically out of our minds today. This really is the main point of Carr’s article which he seems to circle around and come back to frequently; our ability, as a whole society, to think critically is perceived as being diminished and this will the ruin of man. While Carr doesn’t specifically make this assertion directly in his article, he is circling the topic the entire time and in his concluding paragraph states: “It is this control, this mental discipline, that we are at risk of losing as we spend ever more time scanning and skimming

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