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.
He compares and contrasts how his life was with the Web and without it. For example, “Just as Microsoft Word had turned me into a flesh-and-blood word processor, the Internet, I sensed, was turning me into something like a high-speed data-processing machine, a human HAL (325). The Web has changed him in such a way that he felt like a machine. He wanted to stay connected, therefore, he would yearn to check his e-mail, click links, or explore on Google. He noticed the Net was having a much stronger influence over him than his PC ever had (324).
Google is by far the worst example of an information supplier, in that, a search on Google can inundate the reader with an outlandish list of results. The majority of these results are often not what most educators would consider scholarly work, but instead opinion and conjecture. Wikipedia on the other hand, advertises itself as an encyclopedia type service. While their information is rather extensive and referenced for the reader, its basic flaw is that it is collaborative software. It allows its contributors to freely edit the content that is broadcast through the internet.
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.
Carter Campbell Mr. Abedinifard ENG 102 (AS25) 31 Oct 2014 In his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, published in The Atlantic, Nicolas Carr expresses his opinions on the effect the internet has on people’s attentions spans and their intelligence. Carr talks about how reading lengthy articles has become more challenging for him as his internet usage increases. “Immersing myself in a book or article used to be easy. That’s rarely the case anymore” (92). Not only does Carr believe this but states others, including friends and colleagues are also experiencing this affect.
On the internet, there are three main types of dishonesty—the intentional, the unintentional, and the unavoidable. There are two articles that I will be using to show you how and why this is true—Billy Sim by Chuck Klosterman, and Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment by Nicole Ellison, Rebecca Heino, and Jennifer Gibbs. The article is one of the first articles to explore the habits and trends of people in the online dating community—especially regarding deceit. Billy Sims is an opinionated article about a man discovering unintentionally deep truths about people and himself while playing the Sims—a very, very different type of virtual self than online dating. With these two resources, I will show how dishonesty online can be very real, and have very real consequences, but
The Internet: a Clear and Present Danger summary Only a couple of clicks of a mouse can ruin your life. The Internet a seemingly harmless software is full of scams, and graphic video and photos. With a few clicks of the mouse you can give all important information away. Cathleen A. Cleaver wrote this essay entitled The Internet: a clear and Present Danger. In this essay she writes about Children and the internet, pornography and the internet, internet transactions, technology must serve man.
The Internet is a technology that changed the way we read. The Internet causes us to loose focus or to just skim through information really quickly. The need to get information quickly, rather than spending the time to read a book, is due to the Internet. When I need to read something for a class I would much rather go to Spark Notes on the Internet, rather than read a complete book. The Internet has helped reading to evolve.
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.
Nicholas Carr and Clay Sharkey debate whether or not the internet is actually making us smarter or dumber. “Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives- or exerted such broad influences over our thoughts, as the internet does today. “that is one of Carr’s viewpoints. Shirkey believes that “every increase in paperback book to you tube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. 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.