"Is Goggle Making Us Stupid?" Response

In Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” He tries to drive home the point that modern day technology, mainly the internet, is changing the way we read, study and even think. In the article Carr parallels the advances in technology and the internet to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He promotes the thought that the technology we’re becoming more and more accustomed to leaning on is beginning to hard-wire our brains to lean more towards quickly scanning for information rather than ingesting long texts and actually thinking deeply about their contents. Carr believes that ultimately we’ll lose our ability to form our own thoughts and will become reliant on computers to the point where we need them to mediate our own understanding of the world. I am inclined to agree with parts of Carr’s claim however I just refuse to believe that humans will cease to be “human.”

In one point in the essay Carr explains how he has felt these effects. He cites he “feels it most strongly when reading,” emphasizing that when immersing himself in a book or long article which used to come easily to him he now finds his concentration faltering. Simply put he claims that “the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” I can’t help but agree with Carr’s statements as I’ve also found myself less and less inclined towards deep reading as I’ve spent more time on the internet and become used to having whatever information I’m looking for at my fingertips.

Carr bolsters his claim endorsing the thoughts of Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. Wolf contends that “we are not only what we read, we are how we read,” she suggests that the way we scan the internet promotes “efficiency” and “immediacy” and might be weakening our ability to engross ourselves in the richer texts of the past. Wolf explains how our brains develop differently based on the styles of reading we’re subjected to. She states reading “is not an instinctive skill for human beings.” Wolf then explains this by juxtaposing the way readers of ideograms (Chinese, Japanese etc…) and those of written alphabetic language develop different mental circuitry. What Wolf is claiming is that our minds are plastic or adaptable to their given environment. If this is true it’s hard not to agree with Carr’s claim about how as it is becoming more commonplace the style of reading done over the internet is reprogramming our minds to adapt to that particular environment.

Carr insists that it is important for us to be aware of this phenomenon and warns that “if we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with content, we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture.” I endorse these beliefs and personally am going to be a little bit more aware of how I’m feeding my brain. If there’s one thing I’ve taken from this work is that you and I should probably get off of Google once in a while and go crack a book.