Reading Response #2 "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

In his recent article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr’s main claim is that through the history of time, technological advances have worked to help us and hurt us along the way and that we should be cautious to the changes that new technology may bring. He brings up many good examples throughout history including the pros and cons of such inventions as the clock and the type writer to emphasize his point. He uses these examples from the past to show us how we have to be careful with how much we embrace the internet by showing us the internets own set of problems.
In fact, this is what seems to be his inner claim in this article. He states that “we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies” voicing his main complaint with the internet. What he is trying to convey is the fact that our brain is easily susceptible to change and that by engrossing ourselves in technology, we our leaving ourselves more prone to think like the technologies we engross ourselves in. He warns that “The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration,” meaning that as time goes on and we become more acquainted with our new technology, we will lose the ability to have deeper thinking and become more dependant on the technology as our brain source.
What makes his claim so convincing and terrifying to accept is how well he explains the susceptibility of our brain to train itself to a new environment and connects that to how our brains can adjust to the internet. He uses authority evidence from a neuroscientist from Mason University to show us that the brain is not “largely fixed by the time we reach adulthood” but that “the adult mind is very plastic.” While he establishes this well, he also, as mentioned before, pulls from previous points in history for anecdotal evidence to show how changing our thought process can be harmful. For example the invention of the clock brought about a new structure to society that was very helpful. However as Joseph Wizenbaum wrote in this book “Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation” he made the point that “we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.” In other words, moving in the direction of being more convenient in everyday life caused the people to become less involved with their natural side.
After establishing how our brains can be altered in this fashion by the internet, he begins to look toward the future and how continuing advancements with technology could cause us to drift farther from our natural side and change our brain patterns. What I think to be the most convincingly unsettling part of his view of the future is his evidence on how the brains behind Google are actually pursuing the possibility of a “machine that might be connected directly to our brains.” By bring this point to our attention, Carr is showing us again how if we are not cautious we could lose another side of our natural way of living, in this case, the ability to think for ourselves. This point near the end of the article brought home powerfully his claim of caution.