Teachers and professors think the Web is great to a certain point though. Teachers have noticed students are carried away by the Web because they are focusing less on reading. Carr agrees, “…. They don’t necessarily read a page from left to right and from top to bottom. They might instead skip around, scanning for pertinent information of interest… I can’t get my students to read whole books anymore…” (318).
Most things are made much simpler by just googling and searching for words and stories. I think it changed the way we think, the way we write and the way we read. Everything is more to the point and much less details. We may read more because of text messaging, but I wouldn’t consider hat valuable reading. Opening up a book and reading something , that has substance and draws your interest to turn the next page and read more, is what i would call valuable reading.
Summary of “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr Nicholas Carr argues in, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” that the internet is changing the way we think. The internet looks to be slowly taking away the ability to focus very long, and is becoming the most widely used medium for information. Carr has the feeling that he no longer thinks like he used to. Reading a long book or article is no longer enjoyable to him. He attributes this feeling to the extensive use of the internet and computers, even though this usage of the internet has been to help him write.
Not only does Carr believe this but states others, including friends and colleagues are also experiencing this affect. Carr’s goal is to push readers to think more critically about the negative impact internet usage can have on one’s ability to read and articulate articles. Although Carr provides some anecdotal evidence it is not sufficient evidence to prove that Google is making us stupid. In completing a critical analysis of Carr’s essay I will examine both the weaknesses and strengths of his argument and provide research and literature to support my belief that Google is not in fact making us stupid. Carr begins his essay by saying “I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling that over the past few years someone, or something has been tinkering with [his] brain”(91).
2) The author feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain, making it change. He no longer enjoys reading a book of any length because he cannot sustain concentration on the book. 3) He feels that all the time he now spends online is affecting his abilities to concentrate. He recognizes that the Internet has been a useful tool for him to search for information and communicate. He notes that, unlike footnotes, links send you to the information rather than just refer to it.
I feel it most strongly when I’m reading. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book… My mind would get caught up… and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety… begin looking for something else to do.
The article starts by explaining the effects that technology has had on both Carr and his close friends. His friends, which he explains to be along the lines of "literary" types of people, have experienced many troubles indulging themselves into books and articles as well as they had in the past. Carr mentions how they are unable to focus on long pieces of writing and how they must fight in order to finish. He also names two bloggers experiencing the same issue; Scott Karp and Bruce Friedman. Although both bloggers blog on different topics, they had both described themselves as readers, and, through the invention of blogs and the internet, find it much harder to sit down and read through a three page article.
Nowadays, within one minute searching with the toolbars, the great databases of the Internet will immediately bring the information to us. Besides, the printed books became the past thanks to the e-book and other online works on the Internet. Writing becomes a real challenge even to a writer since we spend too much time on the media. “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
Nicholas Carr is the author of the article “Is Goggle making us stupid? Google proponents say that it’s not, they say that we don’t have to use our memory as much as before. Thanks to Google we have more time now to daydream or brainstorm. Or that we can see Google as an huge external hard disk for our brain. Carr thinks that this is bullshit.
How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students’ Research Papers In the article “How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students’ Research Papers”, David Rothenberg argues that the qualities of undergraduate’s papers have been reducing because of overuse of the internet. Accordingly his article, Rothenberg tells us that mostly students, who find information from the Web, is based on fundamental facts. First, he points that there are only articles or information on the bibliography cites and those information are out dated, he sees one of his student’s work that his resource has been published for a long time. He also discovers most of the students’ works are very cleanly and analysis it nicely, but actually the details that his student give are not related to the material; it jumps on and off on the topics. Moreover, students do not try to proof read their assignment before they hand it out.