Nicholas Carr Is Google Making Us Stupid

â€Å"It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change†,- Naomi Wolf Peering into the future as the technologies takes off, internet has immense impact on our every-day life. There is no doubt it has made our life become easier and more convenient. Being world-wide network it has contributed greatly in many aspects: form communication to information sharing. However, while it retains its’ strong positions giving us extensive experience in what we are doing, yet the negative impact of it takes place as well. Criticism of the Web most often questions whether we are becoming more superficial and scattered in our thinking. As the internet offers us the benefits of quick and easy knowledge, it is affecting the brain’s capacity to read longer articles and books. This concerns were released in the July-August 2008 Atlantic magazine, where Nicholas Carr published his magazine article Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains (alternatively Is Google Making Us Stoopid. This article was on top of discussions in the internet and gained a lot of reviews on the issue. Nicholas Carr being famous and well-respected technology writer, has an important voice today in pointing to the nervousness that many people have about technology. Like other critics, he sees change as loss and not as gain. Summary â€Å"is google making us stupid?† Carrs main argument is that the Internet might have detrimental effects on cognition which diminishes the capacity. He began this essay that he had difficulties concentrating while reading long articles or books. Nicholas Carr claims that regular Internet usage may have diminished his ability to concentrate. And there are many people who supports him, for example, Heidi Julavits says: â€Å"I wont deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes.â€Å" The author states that student have changed their approach to study and learning process in general, they are more distracted by the content that Internet offers, they are getting lazy and spend more time online than it is requred. This is how Nicholas Carr is presenting his voice of concerns: Im not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when Im reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and Id spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. Thats rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if Im always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. Of course, as a writer, he finds the Web a valuable tool, but he thinks its having a bad effect on his concentration. Carr admits that we, meaning the humanity and society nowadays, read a lot more because of the Web, but deplores this saying that our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged. Despite the essay provides with plenty of examples why Internet is bad for learning (he shares some responses on blogs, provides with anecdotes), unfortunately Carr sees only one side of the change that humanity is going through. Of course, we see that books are loosing their readers, as books are becoming unpopulated and even obsolete. Moreover, some people could not simply affor buying books, as they are expensive and hard to get. In addition, the knowledge presented in books, is slow to develop, hard to respond to, and sometimes it is not in up-to –date state. Therefore, people rely on the Internet resources to get the information they need, they look for another options (in some cases people even order books online as it is considered as almost the same source of knowledge or tool to learn). It is easy to criticize a new technology; it is harder to understand how the new technology can help create new abilities in humans. And even much harder to understand how technology can actually recapture and re-enable human abilities- it allows us to work more efficiently, to meet new interesting people, and of course for pure entertainment. All we need to do here is to make it well- balanced: the time for learning, the time we spend online, the resources, materials and the books we use combining this approach with lowering up the distractions in Internet called to reduce the time waste online. Keeping these in mind, we need to accept the fact that even in the most useful, handy and profitable things there is always sort of a danger. While it may seem like everyone surfs the web these days, there is fine line between casually checking your social media pages and having a full blown internet addiction. We should not allow internet to distract or disturb our minds. It is necessary to understand that falling into the lure of exploring everything that is available in world-wide network can be harmful and as the result, might lead to internet addiction. So moderate and restrained usage of internet is the key to make it beneficial for us as well as bringing harmony in our lives. To sum up, the first question, which was stated in the beginning of this article, needs to be answered. With all respect to such a great writer as Nicholas Carr, i cant agree with his statement nor with the argument he had provided. In my opinion, Google is not making us stupid. What Google and the World Wide Web are doing is helping people to learn by providing them variety of choices, getting us with access to plenty of tools, platforms, materials and other web resources. Moreover, Google, being the biggest search engine, connects us with people from all over the world and by his connections we can find people alike sharing the same interests, supporting each other in learning and helping in every moment of need. Google is, indeed, making us smarter as we re-discover new ways to learn.