Is Google Making Us Stupid

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In an article written by Nicholas Carr “Is Google Making Us Stupid”? A widely circulated article and in the book that followed, The Shallows (2010), The main point of this article brings up the question of whether the quick access to information on the Internet has led to us becoming more “impatient”. Carr argues that the “media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.” He alleges that the internet is changing the way one thinks to an increasingly shallow way that is, unreflecting and blandly standardized. Carr uses 3 illustrative anecdotes to make his argument of how technology has drastically changed our way of being not only in the way we think but also in the way we operate as human being’s. Carr first starts off by stating that “over the past few years I’ve had the 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 changing. I’m not thinking the way I use to think.” Here Carr is explaining how he doesn’t immerse himself in reading books or lengthy articles the way he use to in the past. And that deep reading no longer exist, and if that’s the case we are struggling to even be able to sit still long enough to immerse ourselves in deep reading. Carr goes on to explain the reason why this is the case, which he blames on spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing the internet. But he then goes on to say, “the web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days and stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.” In this quote Carr is simply saying that even though the internet has made us more lazy as individuals it does have its’ perks especially for a writer like himself. There is no need to
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