"Is Google Making Us Stupid"

In this article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” Nick Carr suggests that due to these online sites, they are hindering our ability to properly process information. He claims that “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.” He goes onto say that he is not able to think the way he used to especially when reading lengthy articles online. Because of these technological advances Carr is having trouble concentrating and looses interests within the first couple pages and the deep reading he usually partakes in, is coming as a challenge. Carr explains that all the research that use to take days of reading through stacks of books can now be done in minutes on a search database. Instead of getting lost in hours at the library with his nose in the books, Carr is jumping between blog posts, podcasts, online videos, and email. Instead of analyzing the text, he is now skimming it for the main points as he says,” My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” People that were once literature majors have now stopped reading books altogether because of the convenience of having all the information you could need at your fingertips. A study done at the University of London shows that scholars used multiple online sources skimming them lightly and hopping from one to the next never returning to one they’d already visited. It was proven however, that due to text messaging, blogging, twitter, and other online resources we are now reading more than ever but undoubtedly a different kind of thinking and reading. Rather than trying to analyze and interpret this material, we are instead trying to “decode it.” It was also brought to light that writing has changed ever since the typewriter was invented, and we didn’t have that expression flowing naturally from handwritten work. One claim that indefinitely stood out in this article was when Carr said "For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind." I feel the reasoning behind this claim is how the internet had such a vast array of information so easily accessible, that it almost seems infinite. I feel that this is severely evident and that the evidence is undeniable. The other claim that I found to have set the tone in Carr’s articles is how "The human mind has been shaped in profound ways by the invention of the alphabet, the map, the book, and many other media technologies and we did not get to control the shaping process. We control some aspects of our technologies, but our technologies control some aspects of us.” To me this claim insists that through these advances, we have to get on board with them and our brain will pretty much be rewired to the change of these events. I agree that through these technological advances we have to adapt in order to maintain our positions in societies with such competition of upcoming generations. From my experiences is, you have to be caught up in the technological scheme in order to maintain many jobs that are offered.