Google is not making us stupid
In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“ Nicholas Carr writes, “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). Carr believes that over time technology has only made us do less but want more.
Carr believes that people have stopped reading deeply and comprehending things, and rely on fast information through the Internet. He writes, “(Maryanne) Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts ‘efficiency’ and ‘immediacy’ above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace,” (Carr, 2008). He believes that the Internet has “dumbed us down” to only rely on simple facts rather than think extensively bout one particular topic or reading.
Carr explains that our brains are “malleable,” and over time it has the capability to alter the way it functions. “As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies” — the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities — we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies,” (Carr, 2008). Carr thinks that through various advancements in technology, our brains over time have adapted and molded to those advancements, but not necessarily in a good way.
He states that Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s experimentation with the speed and efficiency of factory workers in the early 1900s, essentially creating an “algorithm” for manufacturers to get the most out of their workers for their businesses, is what Google is doing for people today. “Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind,” (Carr, 2008). Google is methodically trying to make our “search experiences” faster and easier by collecting data on its users. According to Carr, this is making people want information even faster and therefore we are “stretched thin” by the concept of multitasking. Carr writes, “’As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into ‘pancake people’ — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button,’” (Carr, 2008). He believes we have become so “stretched thin” by the amount of information available to us that we have lost the ability to appreciate the actual information provided to us.
In a way, Carr contracts a some of his thoughts about technology with one sentence, “Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice,” (Carr, 2008). Throughout the article, he appears to bash advancements in technology by giving the notion that technology has made us lazy. We want the best information as quickly as possible, but do not want to put in the work to get the information. Instead we rely on sources like Google to do the work for us, but I do believe we are reading a lot more now as Carr states because of the convince the Internet provides.
I agree with his statement that, “The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV,” (Carr, 2008). I use almost all of his examples on a daily basis many times during the day. I have only lived in Chicago for a little over two years and still am very much not familiar with where certain places are. Therefore, I am constantly using my Google Maps app to locate places. I also use the same app to find the best possible route to get to a location and how long it will take me. I use the Internet as my “radio,” by listening to my Spotify app daily. I have to admit I am a TV junkie, so along with cable, I own a Google Chromecast. Google Chromecast allows me to stream the Internet on my laptop to my television. So, it’s safe to say I use the Internet for my television also.
There are a few things he lists that I do not typically use the actual Internet for, but I use some sort of piece of technology to do so. I use my laptop as my “typewriter,” to write papers. I use my phone when I need a calculator as well as when I actually need to make a phone call. That is not to say a large amount of people do not use the Internet to do the things I don’t do, like use Skype to make a phone call or use a webpage as a “typewriter” to blog or build webpages of their own filled with whatever sort of information someone wants to convey to an audience.
When Carr writes that he has a hard time concentrating now while reading, I agree that the Internet has tremendously influenced that notion. In my “Writing for the Web” course at Loyola, the curriculum was centered on keeping everything “short and sweet” so to speak. Grabbing people’s attention on the Internet is very difficult to do these days because of the vast amount of sites that provide the same content, and people do not want to read much anyway. People want to find the information that is the most relevant or beneficial to them, and move on to the next thing. I find I do not read long articles unless it is a news article that I personally find interesting. Generally, I have never been a huge fan of reading. I do not sit and read a book when I have free time so, reading a book for a class seems even more daunting today than it did when I was in middle school or high school. I noticed how difficult it was to get through a book a few years ago when I decided to go back to college, but I assumed it was because I was in the working world for a few years and got “rusty” when it came to academic work. I probably was “rusty”, but I never really thought that my usage of the Internet was most likely the reason why reading long pieces of information had become so difficult.
In the future, I believe people’s desire for everything to be fast, convenient, and catered to their wants and needs will only progress. I do not think technology advancements are a bad thing at this point in my life. I think that if something is available to make my life easier, I do not know why I would not take advantage of that source. I definitely do not want to go back to the days where my family had a full encyclopedia set and I had to go through books and books and books to find research for even the most simple science report in elementary school. Right now, that information is convenient and at my fingertips, so going to the nearest library to look for books on a certain topic seems extremely unnecessary when I have the capability to find the same information, which is in most cases more updated than those books and in the comfort of my own home.
At the very least, I find the whole article ironic. He writes, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon,” (Carr, 2008). Carr admits himself he has a hard time concentrating on long articles on the web, and yet his article about the topic is very long itself.
Aside from the Internet as a whole, Google is a constant in most people’s lives. When reflecting on this article, I thought of the amount of times within the past few days I had used Google to find a small piece of information. I used Google daily, and many times throughout those days. I simply found what I needed and left the page. I was not looking to read long articles or look in depth. . Even though we have become more apt to multitasking in a growing, fast paced world. Advancements in technology have made access to information more confident for us; we are still looking for content on a constant basis more than ever before therefore, I do not believe Google is making us stupid.
Carr, N. (2008, July 1). Is Google Making Us Stupid? Retrieved June 21, 2015, from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
