Nicholas+Carr-+Is+Google+Making+Us+Stupid?

John Welkner  I think the article that Nicholas Carr has written brings up a lot of points about how technology is shaping our brain is very interesting. The vast array of information in the internet to be used for us has become a crutch that we have to use now. An example is when I play Final Fantasy XI online I use an online guide to gain information. When I am on a phase where I play the game every day and looking up stuff every day I become a resource of information for my friends. Then I quit playing the game for a couple of months and came back and I was no longer the same resource to my friends or even to myself. For awhile after starting back up it was almost like I had to reconnect circuits on how to find the information that I previously could find in an instant. I had to find the crutches I was using again. Another thing that I thought of when I read this article was about the attention span that we have. Nicholas Carr seems to put the shorting of our attention span on just how vast the internet has become. I think that that the speed at which we get the information has become the main culprit to the shortening of our attention span. The reason I say this is because when I was younger we only had dial up internet and it was at a time where I read the most I ever had in my life. Once my family got cable I now look at reading as more of a chore to do. High-speed internet has made it so that we can get all the information we would ever need in a second. I could not imagine having to switch back to dial up internet, it would kill me.

Mark-I agree John, dial-up is slow painful torture compared to high speed these days, remember that sound it played when you were logging on that was my jam. I also agree with the fact that Google has made us impatient to learn things the old fashioned way(Ancient texts of the past called books).

Alex Morrow

Is Google making us stupid? I'm not sure that google has so much "made us stupid" but has made us even more technologically dependent beings; which has spurred in this age of "convenience". But it's hard to blame Google; for they are only the new cog in the machine, the latest piece of the "convenience" puzzle. Frederick Winslow Taylor's ideology of the "one best method" illustrates how we, human beings, are almost programmed to find a way to do something with more ease, more efficiency, quicker, safer, and more rewardingly. It is our nature. And since the industrial revolution we have constantly been finding ways to do so; steam engines, automobiles, automatic rifles, the nuke... (yes, sadly we even look for more efficient ways to kill each other), the radio, then the television, McDonalds, 4-wheel drive (in the case of this past week :O), the computer...the laptop...the //internet!// **//GOOGLE! In the case of Google, I believe it has significantly stunted our ability to // retain information, but at the same time has vastly increased our perpetual knowledge. This online world that Google has brought to our fingertips is quite fascinating and exciting - only in an online world could Americans find out current events in Japan, or look for apartments in Australia, or even job search for opportunities in Europe. It is an age where, although wisdom may not play a large role, knowledge is everywhere, it is readily available, but most importantly - convenient. Within a minute or two most 'search-engine savvy' people will have an answer to any question that they desire, any piece of information that the world wants them to see. And this, in my opinion, is something to be embraced. My only problem with this ever-expanding trend is that it is very influential to users - it sucks them in to a vicious cycle of "easy answers" - it is like what the calculator did to long division. I have very little memory of how to do long division problems anymore because I don't NEED that knowledge in my every-day life. I can divide on my phone, on any computer I'm at, or using my traditional calculator. I barely remember anything from history classes....or science classes....but why would I? Unless I truly, truly care about the subject, remembering for it is only as important to me as getting the A in the class - and I will most-likely only carry it that far. Why do you think schools assign summer reading assignments?! To keep the brain functioning. And this, is where Socrates view of written material plays true in that we would "cease to exercise our memory and become forgetful" John Welkner brings up a good point with his "Final Fantasy" example. He only retained the knowledge for as long as it was good to him. Once it wasn't needed, it was discarded and needed to be re-learnt. The use or //convenience// of the computer is the modern "one best method" of using, accessing, storing or organizing information - it essentially //is// our form of knowledge. Humans today rely so much on this process of attaining information that it is a very scary thought. What if our access to this knowledge was.... **//denied//**?!** We'd be in utter panic and chaos because all of our perpetual knowledge, our readily available facts and stats, our daily communication, our methodical research techniques, and so on and so forth simply become "artificial intelligence" as the author states in his concluding sentence.


 * David Weiss**

Well this was a rather interesting article. The idea that the net is changing the way we think is something that I never really thought about. But now that I do think about it, I could not agree more. The internet really has changed the way I think. Ever since the net came into the world. Patience became a thing of the past. By simply typing a few words in google, people can get find information, music, video and what not within seconds. Patience is a trait that is learned, and by having all these fast pace devices in the world prevents us from learning such a trait. I found that slowly I've been losing my ability to be patient for many things. I now barely have the patience to read two pages of a book without losing my patience. On top of the loss of patience, I've found that now I have a bad habit of jumping around while writing essays. Just like how I will use links to jump from one page to another on the internet, I now write papers in a similar fashion. For example, often I may start begin an essay by writing one thing and then back track to the beginning and start again without erasing what I previously wrote. By the time I'm done, I have pieces of writing scattered all over the place, which I place together in a way that works.

Peter Quattrociocchi III  I don't think the internet is making us dumber, but quite the opposite. If you think about it, imagine how uneducated the common person was before the internet. Sure there were schools, ho wever we all know that teacher's don't know everything in the world, they CAN be biased towards their opinion, and CAN lead to a specific "pigeon-hole) point of view (emphases on can). Sure, children back them might have been able to do things on more of a long-term basis, but there isn't much time. to do otherwise and they lead a life unchallenged. With the internet, discussions of all things may form and information abound may be found. With google comes the ability to gain knowledge on things others might not know, and the internet is possibly one reason why children are more apt to argue with a teacher. Before, a child arguing with a teacher was unheard of and severely punished. Search engines like google allow people to expand their minds. I do find it unfortunate that this information is very quick, but the internet isn't the only source of something that used to be long (a book), is now quick (a blog article). I could go to say the author could have done it in a more physical sense. Micro-waves, cell phones, even cars make things so much more faster that we lose patience. He could have done an article on how any technology makes us lazier or more impatient (I had the power out during one of the recent storms, and I went crazy. My only saving grace was my Nintendo DS that still had its charge full. So to what Alex said...I kinda did go nuts and it was just one day!). My retort to the article is; I agree that Google makes people lazier, but he does not show is own opinion outright if we are dumber for it.

Jeffery Reynolds: I'm not sure I agree with everyone. Has the internet changed the way we think, or does it reflect the methodology of how we as humans always think but have never had a communications medium that reflects this? I tend to trend towards the latter viewpoint. Every leap in communications has been to shorten the time it takes to relay ideas or thoughts, to more quickly bridge the gap between one person and another. The internet is just the latest reflection of that, one that is in the process of being augmented - and even replaced to some degree - with smart phones and 3G/4G networks. From newspapers to telegraph, to the telephone, radio, television, and now the internet, we are simply doing what humans are meant to be doing.

James Le The internet has definitely given us a simple and fast way to obtain and use information. There are those saying that the internet has made us smarter. I agree. There are those saying that the internet has also made us dumber. I also agree in that order. You can't lose what you haven't gained. I feel as though we have obtained much thanks to the internet but then there are those who have lost a few "things" in the process. These "things" vary from person to person and can be insignificant or life changing. As humans we can't gain anything without losing something. As technology advances we will experience loss but at the same time gain a new experience.

Karen H. I agree with James that Google is a double edged sword. In ways Google is making us dumber, well maybe not dumber but mentally lazy. Why spend any time trying to really understand any piece of information, or gain in depth knowledge of a subject when you can look up the information quickly and easily on Google. Will anything be invented or discovered if the process of in depth study goes away?

Alvaro Giorgetta

I don't think that google is making us stupid. But it is true that over the years we became more and more dependent of this website. In my case i use it every day whether it is to find out the address of a place or to find an answer to something in particular. Things like these in the past would take more time to find out but now it takes minutes or seconds. I do agree with the author that people are not reading online in the traditional sense and that they use it to find specific information on a subject. In my case when I read online I cannot concentrate for a long period of time, not because of google but because of stress on my eyes.