“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Reading Response
Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” appeared in the The Atlantic Monthly and discussed his theory that the internet is rewiring the way that the human mind operates. He takes a more skeptical approach to the Internet and its increased use as a medium for reading. Carr asserts that the Internet has changed the way that he reads and has shortened his attention span and capacity for concentration and contemplation. For the most part I agree with Carr’s thesis, but it remains to be seen whether this is a completely positive or negative development. Personally, I tend towards skepticism when something evolves quickly without regard for the ripple effects. Human thought is an important element of existence and it’s uncomfortable to think that it is subject to alteration.
Early in his article, Carr describes the way the Internet has specifically affected his thought processes. “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (Carr). I completely agree that some deeper aspect of contemplation and thought is being lost in the Internet age. Although I have been acquainted with the Internet since a very young age, I feel a difference in the way that my brain operates that is parallel to the increased amount of time that I spend online. I find myself getting annoyed when a page takes more than 30 seconds to load. Objectively, this is odd because a couple of decades ago I probably would have thought that a page loading at that speed was fast and efficient.
It takes a more concerted effort for me to get through a novel or a more tedious academic text, and this was not always my experience. I think that the mental discipline we derive from deciphering and interpreting a text is incredibly important and we are beginning to lose that practice. I find myself starting a thought but instead of following it all the way through, I get distracted and go off on a tangent. I think that this results in several semi-formed ideas that aren’t explored to their best or fullest form. We aren’t able to adequately articulate our thoughts and ideas in the same ways that we historically have. I think this manifests itself in modern politics and ideologies as well. Policies aren’t deeply rooted and developed in an effective way. They are tailored to produce more immediate and short term solutions to provide instant gratification for a public that demands instant results.
Even as I was deciding which quotes I wanted to include in this response, I found myself cringing when an excerpt I liked was particularly long. I have been conditioned to say things concisely and in the fewest words possible in order to hold the reader’s attention. I think that the notion of increased efficiency and conciseness is even more pervasive in modern society. Although this has allowed for a lot of positive developments, I agree with Carr that this ideal can definitely be taken too far. Sometimes you need the entire paragraph to capture the sophistication of an idea, but we’ve been trained to think that ideas can always be expressed in a more streamlined way and with fewer words.
The way that Carr describes the aims of Google, a company at the forefront of Internet development is a little disconcerting. “It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive,”(Carr). I really don’t like this because it implies that our very essence is formulaic and reproducible. If these technologies are trying to anticipate and be in sync with our thoughts; they are essentially undermining the entire practice of thinking.
Contemplation helps us to arrive at our own conclusions and shape a unique and irreplaceable worldview. Ambiguity is an important characteristic of the human mind. I think that ambiguity is tied to tolerance and understanding, and if we lose those capabilities we are losing an important part of the human experience. I would argue that, in a sense, we are losing our individuality in the Internet. Although the Internet is a forum through which a variety of individuals can express their viewpoints and ideas, they derive said expression from certain sources. These sources are increasingly derivative of one another due to the Web’s interconnectivity.
Another issue I take with the cultural shifts engendered by the Internet, is the scale on which they happen. The examples of the printing press and the clock were at once internal and external but the Internet seems more internal and cerebral. Carr articulately sums up this notion of the Internet as an enveloping medium when he writes, “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). I don’t think it’s a good thing when any person or medium has a complete monopoly on human thought and life. We are so dependent on the Internet that I think we are losing some of our ability to think independently.
The effects of the Internet have become most evident for me in the way that I write papers. Instead of thoughtfully mapping out my ideas and arguments, I jot down bullet points with my strings of thought and try to patch them together afterwards. I have found that my papers are less smooth and cohesive when I plan them out in this way and I think that this is indicative of the way that my thought process has been impacted. Instead of analyzing and connecting my different thoughts into cohesive arguments, I am left with fragmented pieces of an idea that I am not fully able to weave together. The Internet leads us to all these different pieces of information but I don’t think that it encourages us to analyze and connect them as well.
I don’t necessarily agree with the modern ideal that faster is better, which the Internet is spreading to every facet of human life. If things are happening at light speed, we don’t have time to stop and analyze the long-term consequences. I don’t think that technological advancement is a bad thing by any means, but I don’t think that it is being scrutinized closely enough. When a search engine tells us that something is true, we tend to automatically believe it due to the notion that technology is smarter and more efficient than people. We aren’t as skeptical of the information we receive from computers as we maybe should be.
People don’t have the attention span to commit to more complex and important ideas. Development takes time and effort, which doesn’t line up with the fun hyperactivity of the Internet. When things are shortened and boiled down to their simplest elements, they lose their complexities and nuances. I think that the quality of our knowledge is being sacrificed in the name of efficiency, which is something that Carr touched upon in the article. There is an entire generation that doesn’t know life without the Internet and the way that they think is being conditioned starting in their formative years. There is the possibility that this younger generation won’t have the capability to preserve the full meaning and integrity of particular ideas and theories.
Later in the article, Carr shifts to an economic analysis of this new way of thinking and reading. “It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction,” (Carr). Carr was discussing how it’s advantageous for advertisers if web users to have short attention spans and jump around so that they can track our interests and target us with specific advertisements. This is an interesting element of the Internet that I hadn’t considered before reading this article, but it makes complete sense.
The profitability of our shorter attention spans is not necessarily a positive development. Advertisement has adapted to these changes in the way that we think, and since it is profitable they encourage and foster them. I think it’s dangerous that the advertisers have a hand in shaping the way that we think and pointing us in a direction that is most lucrative for them. This invites the idea that human thought isn’t just becoming more efficient and expansive, but it’s also becoming easier to control and profit from. The notion that the evolution of human thought is tied so closely to specific channels and interests is hard to grapple with. Yet it connects to the previous ideas that those who control technology and the new mediums control the way we think and the way that particular information reaches us.
