Analysis Of Nicholas Carr's Essay: Is Google Making USupid

Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” explores how the internet can change the way we think about doing research, how it has affected our attention spans, and the matter in which it has influenced our means of concentrating on a subject. When comparing Nicholas Carr’s essay to Jane McGonigal’s essay “Be a Gamer, Save the World” they both similarly point out that technology in general can result in neglecting ones social life. Nicholas essay looks at technology in a negative light while Jane’s views it as an all all-round positive. Both essays give the reader two differing perspectives to compare one another too. This changes how we as a society can view technology; as if it were a lens to look at technology and the impact it has. Nicholas describes in his writing that even though we have more people reading today than we did in the early 80’s and 70’s, we are reading differently due to the structure of the net. The structure of search engines more specifically Google searches and hyperlinks tend to create a flat horizontal reading mode that typically forces the reader to quickly skim over a few lines before moving onto the next source. This act of skimming and moving on to the next link is a major issue because the reader cannot possibly get a full comprehensive knowledge of the source before they move onto the next. Before search engine
And though a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than five million “extreme” gamers in the U.S. who play an average of 45 hours a week.” (Page 177). Jane goes on to say that all those people have real lives that they care about, but they devote most of their free time to video games. She goes on to explain that the real world does not administer the same sort of pleasures, challenges, or social bonding that a gamer can find in virtual