Is Google making us stupid? It might be, I don't think I'm exactly the best person to decide this, but I'm not sure Nicholas Carr is either. Although he has obvious talent as a writer and I very much enjoyed his style of writing, I couldn't help but rolling my eyes and possibly thinking that the guy was being a little over-dramatic.
One of the issues I had with Carr's essay was how he only referenced the problems he noted in people his own age. Carr never mentioned how Google, or even the internet in general, affected other generations that had always grown up with it.(Yes, I "Google'd" Nicholas Carr, trust me the irony isn't lost on me, and he is about 61 years old).
A quote in his article, by Bruce Friedman, went something like "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print...I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it." And maybe I'm an exception or am just being stubborn, but I don't find myself facing this problem. However, I am growing up in a very different time. I believe in some ways Carr holds a very valid point, but I just wish he would have analyzed this aspect of this problem.
Carr's story about Friedrich Nietzsche brought much credibility to his article and was very interesting, but once again it was a story about a person who hadn't grown up with this technology and was just being introduced to it. It only made the article feel a little more one-sided. Just as Carr explaining Taylorism was interesting, it only made me feel like he was being a little over-dramatic.
About half-way through this essay a truly puzzling thought emerged in my mind. Which came first? The internet becoming such an intricate part of our lives due to our need for instant information, or our need for instant information because the internet has become so wide-spread. I have yet to figure this out in a way that agrees with my own judgement, but it was the most thought-provoked I was while reading this article.
Finally, when Carr interviewed Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and Schmidt mentioned making Google into "an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains." That was too far. Along with the 2001: A Space Odyssey references I started to loose faith in this article and began to believe Carr took it a bit too far. Although, as I mentioned this before, I found Carr's style extremely enjoyable. I did not find his take on the effects of the internet to the human brain as enjoyable.
I am sure I will get some flack for this, but I found Is Google Making Us Stupid? one-sided and not filling of its potential.
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