Nicholas Carr Skepticism

Superior Essays
Skepticism have always been there when technologies were newly developed along with new approaches to other methodologies. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr conveys this idea by the examples of Socrates and his resist of adopting alphabet and Squarciafico and his resist of the printing press (Carr, p.564). Nonetheless, are Carr’s skeptical attitude based on the truth? Moreover, in such development of the communication system, is it able to supersede the negative effects with positive ones? Socrates, response to the adoption of the alphabet, was particularly worried about three things. His worries included: that the written knowledge would cause to cease human memory, that writing knowledge on a substance would break …show more content…
He argues that using technologies, which boost mental capacities, will undeniably make the brains to process information as those current technologies are doing. In other words, people will eventually become distracted while they take in new knowledge, as the internet is embedded features of distractions with overabundance of information such as links, pictures, and advertisements. These features are holding people back from concentrating on texts also preventing them from making a deep thoughts related to the text that they are reading. How people are supposed to deeply envisage the points of the text if they don’t read it thoroughly and connect the text to their thoughts? Carr portrays that it is, “in the quiet spaces… undistracted reading of a book… foster our own ideas. Deep reading... is indistinguishable from deep thinking” (Carr, p.564). In Carr’s article, he undoubtedly argues that he doesn’t believe that attaining wisdom cannot be achieved using the internet and, furthermore, using internet consistently will make people become not able to read text through other

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Technology is advancing to where everyday tasks become simpler with a click of a button. Search engines like Bing, Yahoo, or even Google allow people to instantly find answers that we are looking for on any topic. In Nicholas Carr’s article “ Is Google Making Us Stupid,” he appeals to readers’ emotions to describe personal experiences, uses logic, facts, and analysis backed by research to lure the audience in, and persuades them that the internet causes our brain to be easily distracted and shortens our attention span. Carr starts off the article by explaining how he feels the internet is affecting how he focuses on tasks, and how “he can no longer be completely immersed in a book.’’ But as a writer, he also finds the internet to be a “godsend.’’…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the first article “is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr the main purpose that the author is trying to convey is how online searching and the quick return of the information from searching sites such as Google has affected the way we view and consume information. The author persistently states that to the instantaneous nature that the internet has created a just skimming culture in which information is just browsed and not digested or processed. To prove his argument he uses a number of perspectives including personal, scientific, and historical data. He believes that technology as a whole alters the neurological pathways changing the way we perceive things. Carr then goes on to state that algorithms created by Google are constantly…

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This new tech era has made communication stronger than ever and will keep improving with time. The authors Nicholas Carr and Kevin Kelly have different opinions on how technology has affected society throughout time. One point that both authors have reached to, is that people use too much technology in their daily life.…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Yemisrach Reta ENG 121-340 Professor Ashley Waterman 2 May 2017 Rhetorical Analysis of the Essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr uses some evidences in his argument in order to convince the idea of the other people . I believe Carr’s argument is effective because he starts explaining how he feels when he is reading a book and immersing himself in a book.…

    • 1510 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dwight Macdonald has discussed the difference between reading and skimming a text in Reading and Thought. He uses examples such as functional curiosity relating to the growth of educated people to explain how the way we read affects our thinking. Macdonald explains that the more we read from the media, the more irrelevant information we gain. He uses the comparison of people reading in the sixteenth century and the nineteenth century and found that the average educated person back then took about two days to read and understand the material within a text. Nowadays, people skim through the text without understanding what they have read.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is because if people are constantly being distracted they can never truly learn material because they are not dedicating all of their brain space to it. The second Premise that Carr uses is the fact that our brain can rewire itself overtime according to incoming stimuli. Carr cites an experiment where a primate’s neural circuits are changed in response to experience. This premise is deductive reasoning because it leads the reader to come to the conclusion that the brain would rewire itself after long hours using the internet systematically making large portions of the world who use the internet more scattered brained. Lastly, Carr used the premise of the innate bias of the human brain to help lead to his main argument.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Hidden Emotions in the Logic of Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In society, people tend to rely on their computers, smart phones, and other devices so much. Technology has rapidly increased since the beginning of the 2000s and accessing knowledge has never been easier. Information can be retrieved by a few clicks through a search bar on a flat screen. Many people today would say that search engines, such as Google, are saving time and energy.…

    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We are all familiar with this term “Just Google It”, this is one of the most used term when we do not spend our time on research and rely on the internet and other people’s knowledge and expertise, to educate ourselves. Ultimately it transformed us from critical thinkers to lazy robots, that pretty much accepts anything available on the internet. Since we are too lazy to do our own researches. I was alarmed after reading the article and that it is not only me, but people around me. Carr could be right, that our modern society may turn out to be increasingly stupid and leave expended speculation in the past with pen and paper, text.…

    • 848 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he speaks of the effect recent technological advances and methods of portraying information has had on today’s society. The author opens by stating that the relatively recent creation of the internet has hampered the metal processes of everyday life. He uses examples he has faced in his own life due to the evolution of a high-tech culture. For example he says that he has realized his recent inability to sit for a long stretch of time and read, a setback he had not dealt with in years past.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although having his colleagues say they have been affected by the use of the Internet in the same manner as Carr, that does not give us evidence that the Internet is affecting the way we think. The evidence Carr provides ranges from quotes to case studies and a variety of sources, but primarily to solidify his claim. Maryanne Wolf in Carr’s article states is a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. Before introducing the evidences, he made sure the audience knew the credibility of the Wolf before stating a statement by Wolf. Wolf states that “the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology.”…

    • 1048 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Carr and his friends have seen a shift in their cognitive experiences because of their time online with the expansive amount of information online. Carr mentions a blogger, Bruce Friedman, and he describes that the internet has altered with his brain, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” and Friedman said that his thinking has taken this “staccato” sort of quality to it. Not only that, he cannot even read a “blog post of more than three or four paragraphs” without having to resort to skimming (Carr 93). This sort of behavior is something that the internet is teaching not just the young, but the average adult. According to Maryanne Wolf, reading is not a skill that we use as an “instinct,” unlike the natural urge to talk and communicate with others (Carr 94).…

    • 1450 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Carr explains his experiences with google and modern technology. For example, Carr says that because of google, he can no longer read in-depth pieces of writing. This is the same for others as well, talking about his friends, Carr says “The more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (1). Avery Stroman, who wrote a paper regarding his thoughts on Nicholas Carr 's paper and how he feels about google says “I allowed the presence of Facebook, Twitter, and email to prevent me from reading his entire article without stopping. Without thinking, I switched from the article at hand to the internet” (79).…

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    According to Carr (2010), reasoning has been fundamentally altered by the Internet into superficial thought processes through skimming, diversions, and facile learning. The research confirms that the ‘mental calisthenics’ involved in surfing the Internet, consequently puts even more of a strain on the brain, which then results in the lack of comprehension (Carr 2010, p. 3). For example, navigating Wikipedia, where there are numerous links to other sub-topics, have been found to considerably increase distractibility and oversimplified thinking because of the countless information the brain is inundated with, such as advertisements, formats, and others. In essence, screen technology through the loss of focus and depth of thought has radically changed cognition, which is pernicious to an intellectual…

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Is Google Making Us Stupid

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages

    He described how the is set up to make other people money and how critical thinking skills and attention spans are degrading in the process. He wraps up his argument by desrbing what we are losing in the shift towards using the interent as our main information source. He talks about the new idea of considering the mind as a computer feels bad for the loss of deep reading and the intellectual stimulation it provides four our brain. Carr starts the article with a quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey.…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With his general blanket term of “Internet” he by default includes encyclopedias, academic journals, classic literature, world news, and a number of other tools that today’s internet users utilize to deepen their knowledge, inspire, or educate. Mr. Carr refers to a study that texts read on the internet that have links included in them are actually harmful to our ability to understand the texts, as opposed to texts read from a paper. “People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehends less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner.”…

    • 1055 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays