Google IS making us stupid

Section M of Carr: Ian Campbell, Jen Critchett, and John Crum

The evolution of reading and writing has diminished since the ages of when we didn’t have written documents quoting Carr, “…Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, 'cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.’” Stating that the production of written documents and the introduction of the internet will “drain us of our ‘inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,’”
Two most convincing claims:
1. “Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).” We find this convincing because Socrates indeed wasn’t wrong that the internet ceased to exercise our memory and we indeed became forgetful. But he was incorrect that the internet provides a mass amount of free knowledge.
2. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. We believe this to be true because with the availability of the internet, we no longer go into depth on the reading and research of the knowledge that we wish to gain. The internet deprives us of the personal communications that our ancestors used to perform.
Two most interesting claims:
1. “What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—‘I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid’—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence.” I find this interesting because Carr is comparing the the computer to a child and the human to a robot.
2. “The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds.” I find the interesting because we read books to strengthen our minds but this guy is saying that they will weaken our minds.