Is Google Making us Stupid

Dane Kaldahl

Toby Veeder English 104

Critical Analysis 2 (Is Google making us stupid? By Nicholas Carr)

February 17, 2011

Is google making us stupid Critical Analysis

The world today is surrounded by technology.  Every single day people are bombarded with the newest technologies that will make our lives easier.  Is Google making us stupid: by Nickolas Carr is one instance of this constant bombardment.  The article discusses the slowly dissipating attention spans of not only our youth but anyone that is becoming accustomed to using the internet frequently.  Case studies that Mr. Carr uses supply concrete evidence that technology is changing our old formed habits of reading long passages and writing.  He also uses some instances in the past that proved such facts that as technology came along it made our reading habits fall short of what they used to be.  He mentions the extremely famous company Google not only because it is cause of killing concentration, but it is also is a company that everyone knows and can relate to.

One aspect that made this particular piece hit home was the fact that there were almost no opinionated statements.  All the facts that Mr. Carr presented were case studied facts that were done either by credible universities or just credible individuals.  He also expressed in many cases, his own first hand experiences when it came to his point about Google.   Carr brings up one very compelling case about a pathologist, Bruce Friedman at the University of Michigan Medical School:  “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print.”  Bruce described his hardships with his comprehension and how technology has made it much worse.  To any reader a firsthand account is usually more compelling than actual facts. 

There is much controversy when it comes to technology and what we should do in the future.  People in this generation have grown accustomed to getting there information in a few milliseconds instead of actually reading what they need.  It is briefly mentioned that reading is not biological, we develop our own habits over time.  When you take an older generation that did not have the ease of computer access, reading was all that they did for their information.  It is taught to newer generations that things are fast and can be done instantaneously.  Growing up with this mentality makes it seem as though long passages are obsolete when you know you can type in what you want in a search engine and get what you need summarized in a few paragraphs.  Carr writes this piece not to attack to Google but to attack all technology that makes things fast and easy.  Carr mentions Google to simply give everyone something to relate to.  It is not an issue of just Google just making us stupid but all this new age technology that is making us stupid.

Carr briefly mentions in his piece some of the experiences of others concentration problems well before computers came along.  Although computers are not present in some of the passages there is a certain technology mentioned.  All that he is saying is that it’s not just our generation breaking concentration but it is also many generations before us as well, and the cause is the same; technology.  The fact that he mentions personal accounts of technology ruining concentration makes a very compelling argument in his point.  When reading this piece it is easy to pick up on the cause of all our problems.  Everyone wants their information “now” and they do not like to wait. 

The work presented is put in a way that you can tell is very serious manor.  His reasoning for his serious tone is quite simple, he wants to make sure everyone knows that even though they might deny it, there concentration levels are not what they could be.  He uses more of an informative tone than a persuasive tone.  He gives us information but never states one way or the other how we should perceive it.  This is more of a piece to let us know some of the troubles that technology is causing and not to tell us how to live.

It is no secret that technology is everywhere.  Advances are being made everyday to make our lives easier and more efficient.  Google, although looked at by one author as something that has makes dumber I believe that it is only making us smarter and more efficient.  The whole point of technology is to make life easier and faster.  At the fast pace of the world today it is hard to keep up sometimes.  That is why Google is such a good thing, we may lose our concentration after reading fifty pages but why read fifty pages when all the information you need can be stuffed into a few paragraphs.  Us as humans do not have the time to do things the old fashioned way.  Adapting to the world around us is a very important aspect of survival, technology is not going anywhere so why fight it?