Is Google Making Us Stupid?

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Summary

In“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr shows his concern about how technology influences the way of thinking. The question at issue for this article is just like the title, which is “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Google could give us the information we want in one second, but it also could destroy people’s brain. This would be a question for people, who rely on the Internet to absorb information and give up the traditional way of reading. However, this article not only discusses the effect of Google, but also focus on the whole Internet system. The author Carr believes that the Internet is harmful to our brain, because our way of thinking is shaped and changed by the Internet.

Carr begins to prove his point by pinpointing that the habit of surfing on the Internet affects the ability of reading. He mentions that he cannot sit down to concentrate on an article that is more than three pages. This situation also happens to other online bloggers. Then, Carr notices the anecdotes are not enough and he uses a recent study from University College London to support his view. This five-year study tracks the habits of the user and finds people tend to read large amount of short articles on the Internet. After claiming that point, Carr contends that the question is at the way we read. The circuits of our brain could be influenced by the surroundings, because our brains are very flexible. He assumes that to read on the Internet and books will cultivate different circuits, because the experiment suggests that people who use different language have the different circuits in the brains. Next, Carr tries to use the example of clock to show how our brain affected by this small clock and this can also be done by the Internet. The clock tells us when to sleep and when to eat. We lost our own feelings during the process of adapting and view brain like “clockwork” (537).

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