Is Google Making Us Stupid: A Summary and Analysis
Every day, millions of people use the internet to learn, discover, and explore the world in ways that seemed nearly impossible hundreds of years ago. It is because of this new drastic change that many have questioned how this technology is affecting our brains, including Nicholas Carr in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In the paper, he discusses the reasons why he believes the Internet is affecting our intelligence with examples to support his statements. Although his article proposes an interesting idea, the author confuses the audience due to many problems within the paper. It not only has a misleading title and confusing introduction, but it also is poorly structured and lacks reliable resources. All these reasons together make “Is Google Making Us Stupid” a weakly written article that is difficult to read and understand.
Carr begins with a quotation from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey describing how his changing brain circuitry is similar to supercomputer HAL losing control of his artificial “brain.” Carr starts with this example to show how the advancement of technology and the internet has led to the “rewiring” of his brain. He states that while he used to be able to get immersed in a lengthy novel or article, he now finds it difficult to even maintain focus after a few pages. He begins to explain why he thinks this is happening by explaining his history with the internet. In his own words, he says the internet has been a godsend for him as a writer because of the ease to find reliable information and jumping from resource to resource. Although the positives, he acknowledges how media theorist Marshall McLuhan identified that the media shapes not only what we think about, but how we think overall. He then explains that the internet is slowly degrading his abilities to focus on and contemplate ideas for him and his colleagues.
When he had heard from some of his friends and bloggers that he follows, they reflected similar experiences to his own complaining about the more time they invested in the web, the more difficult it was to read long pieces of writing. He goes on to say that according to results from a published study of online research habits, people visiting two popular research websites exhibited skimming activity. Although they would sometimes save a long article, there was no evidence of whether or not they fully read the article. Also, due to the prevalent amount of text all over the internet and popularity of online messaging and texting, people are more likely to be reading a lot more than they used to before the rise of the Internet.
Next in article, Carr talks about Friedrich Nietzche and how he bought a typewriter in attempts to continue writing as his vision weakened. When using the typewriter, Nietzche’s writing had become more compact and tight according to his friends after he used the typewriter. Other technologies like the typewriter throughout time have proven how the human brain is malleable.
Carr continues with more examples showing how we used to define our brain working “like clockwork,” but now we would say they work ”like computers.” All over various types of media, Carr notes how we can see pop-up ads, capsule summaries, and easy-to-absorb info-snippets that tend to distract us and switch our focus. There also were people like Fredrick Winslow Taylor who used the advancing technology to increase productivity, helping establish the philosophy of the Industrial Revolution.
The philosophy of the Industrial Revolution has guided how our society is organized for the past few centuries, and its effects can be seen in the Internet, a machine designed for efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information. Carr discusses how Google uses a similar philosophy for its collection of data by trying to make the consumer’s time on their website as efficient as possible with the most accessible information as possible. Google’s future ambitions are to create an artificial intelligence to help access information that might be accessed through your brain. While this seems positive, Carr notes how it is in Google’s interest to distract us with advertisements, and technology that we will use in the future will be no exception. He goes on to say that filling the world with “content” and other information that is only surface-level for important issues will cause us to sacrifice “something important … in ourselves [and] in our culture.” He then concludes the essay by restating his fear of the “rewiring” of his brain and relates it to his introduction.
Before the audience has even read “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, the article misleads readers with its title. The title entices the reader by creating the concept that Google is detrimental to our intelligence, but in the article, he instead argues how the internet is changing how we think instead of our ability to learn.
At the start of the essay, he references the film 2001: A Space Odyssey in order to appeal to the audience, but it does so ineffectively. The film was made in 1968 and has received a great deal of praise throughout its history (source). While the film has been praised greatly, younger audiences will have a harder time being drawn into an article that is talking about a movie they have not even seen. The gap between the release of the movie and article spans a total of forty years which makes it hard to believe that the new generation has seen this film. Even though this introduction does not sufficiently engage the audience, Carr does a decent job at explaining the reference. A modern movie reference would have created a greater interest to a broader audience.
After his rough intro, Carr fails to prove his authority and uses unreliable resources creating a lack of trust with the author. When Carr begins to explain his argument, he comes across as a casual blogger who is not special in any particular way, except for the fact that he thinks that the internet is starting to affect how he thinks. If the reader were to do some research, they would learn that he had written three books by the time of this article and was writing the very popular blog Rough Type (source). All these examples could have been used in the article for the author to create a sense of authority, but he chose otherwise. He also lacks strong resources for his writing due to him referencing friends or inconclusive research. In the article, Carr mentions how his literary friends are also noticing the same issues that he has experienced. While this does show that others have had similar experiences, it does not confirm that this trend is common amongst many, especially since he does not provide a number for how many of his friends have expressed the same sentiments. Another source he uses to support his argument, a published study of online research habits, shows that people exhibited skimming activity when using the internet. He uses this to explain why the thought processes of many are changing, but the information and the article itself lacks enough evidence to affirm that. If he had used information from a conclusive scientific experiment, he could have a stronger support for his argument.
Throughout Carr’s paper, it is difficult to read it due to a weak and unsteady structure. Throughout the paper, he will bring up previously discussed topics in different contexts which makes the article hard to read and interpret. If he had employed the use of an easy-to-follow format, then it would be easier to understand his paper overall. He would also talk positively about the internet for maybe a paragraph or two, but then would return to how the internet is changing him in a negative light. The lack of a strong opinion could be felt throughout the paper and made it challenging to even understand where Carr stood on the issue. Even by the end, he provides no argument as to which side he believes, but instead reminds the reader of how he is “haunted” by scenes in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. While this does provide closure for the article, it still does not provide a concrete answer for what Carr believes and what he is arguing to his audience. By the end of the article, the reader is left confused by all the information that they had to decipher while reading and is still pondering what it was that Carr was arguing for.
Is Google Making Us Stupid proposes the idea that the internet is not only changing our way of life, but how we think on a daily basis. While the idea initially sounds interesting, Carr lacks the necessary features for creating a strong argument and ends up running in circles. His work lacks a credible basis of supporting information and a final strong opinion to conclude the article. Even though Nicholas Carr is an accomplished writer, his composition Is Google Making Us Stupid ineffectively justifies his opinions and therefore lacks strong appeal.