Analysis + personal experience - Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr - Essay Example

Carr has argued that rapid approach to information by using the internet has led us to become impatient and anxious with reading and has encouraged us to develop the habit of just skimming through material instead of reading it thoroughly. He says “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”(534) He has further elaborated that the brain of a human acts in response to alterations in technology and so our concentration spans have fallen owing to the impact of the Internet as he says, “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.” (536) Moreover in order to preface his stance he has used some tales from bloggers and has quoted examples from the researchers who have investigated on the topic.

He has emphasized on the point that humans have adopted the speed that computers and internet have conveyed them. Carr cites the Kubrick’s prediction “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” (541).The article discusses the deteriorating reading habits of students and the dehumanizing effects of the internet on the lives of the people extensively using it. . to be devoid of emotions and they work like machines as he quotes “In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.”(537) Before the invention of the clock people worked according to their own strength and capability but in today’s century we measure our biological needs from the time shown by the clock.

As Carr states “Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.” (537).Ironically we have taken on the unremitting speed of the machines that were invented to make things easier for us. Carr supports his stance by saying “When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” (537) Moreover there has been a trend in students to browse and paraphrase whatever they find with a few clicks and instead of analyzing their material properly, they are determined to just skim through it.

Carr in his article states that “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins.” (535). The author of the book ‘The death of "why?” the decline of questioning and the future of democracy’ Andrea Batista states “young people are barely reading what they find anyway_ because internet is changing the very way they read.

” The technique with which students now read on the internet is different from the conventional way that had been followed since long. Even Carr states that it is difficult for him to sit and read “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”(534) students have developed