Reading Response #2

Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” suggests that the internet and the way we use it could be changing and shaping the way we think. He states: “that for me, as for others the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind.” “My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” I admire how he phrases this thought and concur with it. I too have been noticing that I can’t seem to focus on lengthy essays or lose interest far too quickly. Most of the time, I wonder if I could just type the information into Google and receive the condensed version of whatever it is I don’t actually want to read. Carr uses a study conducted by scholars from University College London. A five year research program examining computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites to endorse his claim that: “we may well be in the midst of a sea of change in the way we read and think.” The study found that people using the sites exhibited a form of skimming activity, hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to a source they had already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would bounce to another site. All signs that users are not reading on line in a traditional sense more in a new form of “reading” as users are now “power browsing.” Carr reports to us of a speech a few years back where one of Google’s founders Larry Page was quoted as saying: “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” Now for me that alone was quite scary because a world ran by artificial intelligence doesn’t leave much space for intelligence as we know it and this frightens me. About halfway through this article Carr reminds us subtly of a claim I hadn’t thought of. “The faster we surf across the Web- the more links we click and pages we view- the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and feed us advertisements.” “The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought.” “It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.” Once I read this It all made sense and I could fully endorse this claim. Of course they want us all to be speed readers and fast thinkers this equals impromptu buyers and the easier we are to become distracted the more likely we are to actually pay attention to their advertisements. So if they are collecting our data crumbs and know what we are interested in. than the more chances they have of catering their advertisements to our tastes. This in retrospect helps to up their odds considerably that we will be purchasing their products. This idea was such a minor piece to the article as a whole but to me it really struck a chord. Because this made sense to me the bottom line is always money. So Google and companies like it may or may not be making us stupid but I bet they would like to because the dumber we are the more likely we are to buy their products and spend our money.