Preview

Analysis Of Is Google Making USupid, By Nicholas Carr

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1103 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analysis Of Is Google Making USupid, By Nicholas Carr
Through the short story, Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author, Nicholas Carr suggests that the Internet affects how human beings process literary works. He begins to illustrate this point by using a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where the man purposely disassembles HAL, the supercomputer, in order to disconnect its ability to think for itself. Carr personifies HAL, and describes how it could feel its brain being taken away as the man stripped it of its memory circuits. Carr compares the sensation that the supercomputer endures, when losing its mind, to how the Internet has rewired our human brains. It has made low-concentration levels a norm, and thus, has caused a change in our reading styles: we now immerse in a shallow …show more content…

It is made more appealing by introducing shortcuts. These shortcuts enable people to grasp a short summary of the article, without wasting time by reading the entire text. The advancement of the Internet is comparable to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s model, which broke down jobs into smaller steps to maximize efficiency. Taylor’s ethic is prominent on the Internet, and tries to establish the single most efficient method to carry out “knowledge work”. Taylor’s concept of breaking down tasks is exactly what Google is doing by systemizing everything for the intellectual mind. This goal is evident in Google’s attempt to make vast quantities of information, accessible at a quicker rate, in order to increase the productivity. Google aims to turn their general search engine into an artificial intelligence, which is comparable to HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. They hope to do this, because they believe that if a person has all the world’s information attached to his or her brain, the person would have the capacity to be more productive. The idea of being replaced by artificial intelligence is unsettling, because the human brain is so imperfect, yet a computer can be adapted to meet these …show more content…

Google and other companies collect their information from what we surf on the Internet, so that they can advertise things that appeal to us. Therefore, the faster we process the data, the more information they gain for their own use. Their aim is to distract the reader; so that they can gain from whatever information we leave behind for them to use, to advance their own interests. The Internet is comparable to Plato’s Phaedrus, where Socrates shortsightedly worries that the development of writing would restrict people’s ability to think for themselves, and therefore, they would lose their wisdom. In a way, the Internet prevents us from coming up with our own, innovated ideas, but in the long run, it provides a platform where people are able to acquire knowledge based on past research and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” This essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, starts by quoting, and then talks about a scene from a popular science fiction movie, which is not only a good hook, but also leads straight into his topic about the issues of technology, though he quickly turns to jargon and larger words, making it harder to read the essay, which is irony as the topic is about how it's becoming harder to read in bigger chunks. He explains that because of the style of the internet and technology; we have become accustomed to quickly browsing, never-ending distractions, and an urge for immediate answers.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. He talks about the influence the Internet has on people. How easy it is with the click of a button and you can get thousands of results. This is the power of Google. It’s having effects on the brain but not quite like you would want it to.…

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nowadays, if a young adult hears about a new terminology, instead of going to a library and looking it up in an encyclopedia like what his or her parents would do when they were young, he or she will pull out his or her smartphone and “google” it. Thanks to Google and all other information technology providers, the information and knowledge in this world are closer to the netizens than any other time in the history. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, more than acknowledging the great opportunities which Google has brought to him, Carr brings up his own concern that “the Net …is chipping away [his] capacity for concentration and contemplation.” He also points out the Net is reprogramming people’s brain circuits to change…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    able to read correctly. This essay will explain why Carr believes "Google is Making Us Stupid."…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short essay “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Carr talks about how the Internet is messing with his mind and making him have a harder time…

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is changing the way that we think and that it diffuses our focus and our ability to comprehend information. Throughout his article, he makes use of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to persuade the reader to his point of view on the Internet in a negative way.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The efficiency of the web has forever changed our lives, although it might not be for the best. Ever since the invention of ways of communication, people have been talking down about them and saying they are not good for us, finally society might listen. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” written by Nicholas Carr, Carr asserts how the internet is depleting our abilities to read deeply as well as explaining how our concentration abilities deem nonexistent while trying to read anything more than a few paragraphs. The essay is written towards people who feel the effects of the efficiency of the web; loss of concentration and lack of ability to retain information. Nicholas Carr is not persuasive in his essay due to his overuse of assertion and lack…

    • 150 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. Carr speaks on how over the last decade his focus and ability to concentrate has been declining due to the fact that he has a plethora of knowledge available to him on his smartphone or computer, thus he is not able to focus on a task at hand for as long as he could before the age of information. Carr claims that his mind is changing for the worse and backs his evidence with first hand accounts of respected scholars who also share the same fate as he does. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is an article that delves deep into the age of information and can explain why it is much easier for people to procrastinate today than it was a decade ago.…

    • 598 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although information is available by a click of a button, the internet is influencing both our mind and our reading habits, life without Internet is unthinkable, so much so that it has become a universal medium. Carr grabs the attention of the reader by stating a quote from a movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the final scene where Dave loses his mind (533). After that, Carr makes a connection of how the movie ends and how deep reading is a struggle due to the countless hours on the internet.…

    • 1249 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In his article: Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author Nicholas Carr describes how Internet searching influences he and his friends. He states that he became to lose “concentration” on books and long-articles. Therefore, he raises a view that we need to care about the Web information, although it makes human life more convenient. He wrote: “The Web [had] been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes” (Para.3). Obviously, the Internet searching technologies, for instance, Google, it really helps us save times. The Internet searching technology makes human life more convenient and make office works and school paper works more efficient.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the value of deep reading increased along with the creation of books did we loose a part of our primative selfs? Human brains are not hardwired to be able to think undistracted or to be completely immersied in one thing that you cannot be aware of your surroundings. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “The Deepening Page” by Nicholas Carr the author explains the rise in value of undistracted reading and the how technology took away that skill but brought us closer to our primal way of thinking.…

    • 976 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Google has been conditioning our minds to be able to go through data faster, to click on more links, and to make them more money. However, the human mind shouldn’t be trained to just go through things quicker and to inhale more information. The mind should not only learn new information, but it should also be able to reflect over and contemplate the new information that it is constantly receiving. The mind should be able to say, “This isn’t right, and we can’t allow this to go on” on topics it feels strongly about. An example of why this transformation of the human mind is a step…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article, author Nicholas Carr, presents a very interesting question: is Google making us stupid? Throughout the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Carr provides his audience with plenty of factual information. The audience somewhat travels through a time lapse of how we started out reading simple pieces of literature way back before the printing press was invented and now have evolved into reading articles online. The information leaves the reader thinking about whether or not this is actually happening. Carr’s belief that Google is making us stupid, or in better words, lazy, makes sense because of the search engine making the information we desire so easily accessible. Carr is correct that Google is making our population stupid.…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Conclusion, Google can make us feel omniscient. The internet is, indeed making certain users lazy or in Carr’s term “stupid”. The internet supplies us with many distractions which in return forces us to “skim through information.” We don’t get a full understanding about things if our choice of educating ourselves is by glancing atinformation. This is also the case if we were to pick up a book and just read a few pages and expect to get a full understanding about the content. Carr agrees that the internet is a great tool, but the way in which we are using it is what is causing a lack of intelligence and users are starting to have a shorter attention span. The bottom line is that the internet is making us less smarter,ruining our ability for creative input and deep…

    • 1965 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    report paper

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In an essay written by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google making us Stupid?", Carr argues how the Internet may diminish our capacity for concentration and contemplation. He himself has experiences lack of concentration like the student. He explains, "….I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore." But it furthermore then just diminishing the capacity for concentration, the internet according to Carr also affects the way of thinking. Carr clarify, "Today, in age of software, we have come to think them as operating "like computers." But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain's plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level." Much like the student, she…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays