Nicholas cites many experts who are mostly literary types, on how they too feel about the “Net.” Most of them seem to have similar experiences while on the internet. The more they use it, the more they have to struggle to stay focused on the task at hand. Scott Karp, a blogger who writes about media, went as far to say
Is Google Making Us Stupid? 9/30/2012 ENG140 Introduction to Writing Kanesha Howard In Nicholas Carr’s story “Is Google Making Us Stupid” his main point is the question, is quick access to the internet making humans more impatient to read and want to skim through stuff more. This story is a very well informative story. Carr uses google as a metaphor for the wider internet. When Carr asks the question is google making us stupid, he may have set an alarm for many.
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.
What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains: Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr Thesis: As the Internet becomes our primary source of information, it is affecting our ability to read books and other long narratives. This process of rewiring our brains carries the danger of flattening human experience even as it offers the benefits of knowledge efficiency and immediacy. 1) The author begins the article with a description of the closing scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave dismantles the memory circuits of Hal, the artificial brain that controls the space ship. 2) The author feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain, making it change.
Internet Impact on Society In “Hal and Me” written by Nicholas Carr, Carr discusses how the Internet is impacting each individual that is using the Internet. Carr took his own intellectual journey in 2007 and realized he was experiencing difficulty in focusing on his work. His main concern was the difficulty he was having particularly on careful and concentrated reading, thinking about that reading, and writing carefully about it. Carr made a conclusion that the Internet itself was impacting his ability to concentrate and something had to change. In “Hal and Me”, Carr uses examples and personal experiences to relate to the positive and negative impacts the Web has on society in general.
He writes informative books about a variety of social and economic issues facing a variety of cultures present in the United States as well as other countries. The author has been praised for his knowledge of the customs and lifestyles of many groups of people. Ashabranner once commented, “I write about what I know and what I have experienced.” The author is noted to do a great deal of field research and library research. He tends to interview, converse with, and sometimes even live with the people he writes about. He conveyed that library research is important to his full understanding of a subject, so he will refer to many books, articles, government reports, and scholarly studies.
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). He suggests that due to his internet usage he has a more difficult time being able to read and think critically about lengthy readings. He mentions having difficulty analyzing long articles or books and states his friends also complain of similar difficulties. He believes when a person is attempting to read an internet article and it is riddled with ads, pop-ups, and hyperlinks, it is challenging for readers to read such an article without being led or pushed onto different pages and websites. Carr relies heavily on his and his friend’s personal beliefs and fails to reference legitimate studies done in order to determine the causation of shorter attention
Is Google Making us stupid? The essay's thesis is: "The following essay appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic.While the title asks if Google is mak- ing us stupid, the essay examines how not just Google, but technology (typewriters, clocks, the Internet) changes the way we think. Nicholas Carr is author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." Carr begins by writing about how he used to be an avid book reader. It was one of his favorite things to do, but over time he believes the way he thinks changed.
Another aspect of the article that aids to its effectiveness was the language that he used throughout the article; it was nothing short of straight forward and to the point. In the headnote of this article, there are many professions and actions that he has completed that show that he is qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to critical writing about such topics. Proficient in writing and media in general, his work as an author in writing reviews specifically pertains to articles such as this one. He being an author, a mass media editor, and a professor brings strength to his Saltzman’s ethos. Throughout the article Saltzman brings up many examples of how the titles in news media are unfair and one sided rather than all around accurate.
This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.” I tend to agree more with Sharkey because there are a lot of learning toold we can gain from the web. The internet is making a lot of people lazy, it takes all the work and effort out of reading, writing, and even thinking. What used to be time consuming can now be done in a shorter period of time. With just a few clicks and typed words. Most things are made much simpler by just googling and searching for words and stories.