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.
She then brings up the issue of unnerving newspaper headlines such as “Bloodlust Video Games Put Kids in the Crosshairs” (205). Sternheimer feels not enough emphasis has been given to other issues such as “social rejection and depression” (206). She also brings our attention to information on statistical evidence. Sternheimer believed it to be “controversial” and feels it “exclude[s] a host of other factors” (207). Sternheimer feels it is these other over looked factors that are truly the cause of “young killers” (210).
Sweeping the Nation In the essay “Facing the Facebook” by Michael Bugeja you will learn about problems college students are facing because of advanced technology such as Ipods, PDA’s, cell pones, and online communities. This is not only impairing students in the educational sense but in judicial sense. Michael Bugeja makes an excellent point about technology these days and how it is affecting our world negatively. In the summary below you will read about some his points and see how genuine they are. In the essay Michael Bugeja essay he points out how the use of modern technology is affecting students.
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.
Leslie Hicks Communications 5 Opinion Paper: “Isolated by the Internet” According to Clifford Stoll, author of the book from which this excerpt, “Isolated by the Internet”, has been removed for our evaluation, the Internet can have harmful, declinitive effects on a persons’ real-life social ties and mental health. He cites a study on internet use by two psychologists from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as an early independent study done by Psychologist Kimberly Young on the effects of internet addiction to support his assertions. In both studies, the internet was shown to increase rates of depression among users, in direct tandem with frequency of use. Also, loneliness increased as the internet was shown to reduce the number of contacts in frequent users’ real-life social circles. By “real-life social circle”, I mean what Stoll defines as Deep Social Ties.
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.
Carr argues, in reference to Stanley Kubrick's: 2001: A Space Odyssey, "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, 2008, p.1). Carr believes that the constant need the human race has shown for such technology, will end up stripping humans of their humanity. The article fights to explain how the days of old are being tainted by these new technological advancements and how in the end, humanity will become "artificial". The article starts by explaining the effects that technology has had on both Carr and his close friends.
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” - A Rhetorical Analysis Nicholas Carr starts this very well written article with a rather emotional scene from the 2001 blockbuster movie – A Space Odyssey. In the scene, the main character of the movie; an astronaut named Dave disconnects the memory circuit that controls the artificial brain of the supercomputer HAL which via a malfunction nearly sent Dave to his death. He then goes over to liken that scenario ironically to what he believes the internet is doing to his brain. His central claim simply put is that the internet is adversely affecting his thinking. He says that as a writer, he has ceased to go deep into the sea of words like a scuba diver but now rather skims through various texts on the internet propelled by hyperlinks just like a guy on a jet ski.
In the paper Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era, the author Richard Restak describes the potential health hazards that developing technology and the advancement of modernity in our society today has on human brains. Restak focuses only on the negative aspects of new technology and he even touches upon some of his own negative experiences. He discusses crawlers that were originally created as an early storm warning system that showed up on the top of television screens, which have now developed into something, “ubiquitous, forcing an ongoing split in our attention and a constant state of distraction” (Restak 411). While watching an interview with the First Lady Restak found himself focusing more on the crawlers that were discussing
Nina ends her article with three cases of cyberbullying causing the victim to commit suicide. The second text is an article written by a cyber-bully called Aleks Krotoski. Actually he was not as much of a cyber-bully as he was a teenager who enjoyed being antisocial on the internet. At least we are given to understand that not actually hate on someone because any racial or religious reasons. Either way he tells the story of how he discovered the internet and how he could simply hide behind his digital mask and saying things he probably wouldn’t have said if he was confronted with these people in real life.