Reading Response #5

Nathan Barbo
English 100a
2/11/10
Reading Response #5
Writer and blogger Nick Carr recently wrote an article for The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” His main point in the article was how the internet is molding our brains and changing the way we read, how since he started using the internet more he can’t stay focused on books he’s reading. He used to get sucked into books and read them for hours but now he can only go a few pages without getting bored and needing something else to occupy his brain.
In his article Nick Carr claims “The human brain is almost infinitely malleable”. To back up his claim he also quotes James Old, a professor of neuroscience at George Mason University, saying “that even the adult brain is very plastic” and that “the brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.” Basically Carr is saying that the human brain constantly reprograms itself to work better for what we most use it. As we use the internet and other new technology more and our brain changes. The brain wants to get information faster and be constantly moving because that is how the internet works, Which causes us to lose the ability to sit and read for hours because our brain doesn’t want to sit and get deep into a book. It wants to be moving and looking at lots of different things.
I agree with what Carr says. I think my generation has lost the ability to sit and read a book. Most of us don’t read books even if they are assigned for school, we just sparknote it to find out what it is about. I find it very hard to just sit and read through anything that is more than a couple pages. My mind stops focusing on what I’m reading and starts going other places. I think it is like any muscle in our body if we don’t work it hard, it will become hard to work. For example, my throwing arm is always sore at the start of baseball season. I need to work it with good hard throwing in order for it to be able to perform well in the game. If I do not work my arm hard it will not be able to make the long throws in a game. I think the lack of working our brain harder with more in depth reading makes it hard for the brain to focus. This also leads to one of the other problems my generation has and that is understanding and forming our own thoughts on what we read. A lot of times we are told what to think. Like I said earlier we use sparknotes for the books we are supposed to read and they tell us what to think about the books. We can also go to bloggers that summarize the books and give their thoughts. We can even go straight to the authors own site and find out what his intentions were in his writings.
Nick Carr’s points should make us stop and think and importance of the value of reading good literature, but still enjoy the many benefits of the internet.