Nicholas Carr's Essay 'Is Google Making USupid?'

Words: 1124
Pages: 5

Why do we use Google so emphatically as we do? It’s because we seek for knowledge and understanding of topics that are uncommon to us. Nicholas Carr's essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" is a reflection of the negative influences which Google and the Internet have on how we connect with the world and one another. Carr seems to take this personally and how it has been a "godsend" to him as a writer. While condemning it for its conscious-like powers, "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory" (313). Carr makes actuations that he losing the ability to control his own mind, not that he has lost it, but that it is changing. He believes the cause of this is the fact that the Internet has become a universal medium for him. Meaning that it acts as a conduit for all of the information that flows through his head. Carr uses the above anecdote to mimic how HAL, the …show more content…
In a study of ESL students studying English in a university setting: ...the authors found that 68% of the students preferred learning through the use of hyperlinks, and that they "perceived the links as helpful in order to achieve better text comprehension, [they] ultimately found that there was no difference between the reading comprehension of those who learned through interactive websites and those who learned through books, it is interesting to note that the students still felt as if they had learned more through the use of the Internet. Carr also does not take into consideration e-readers and tablets, in which people read books, articles, and newspapers in electronic form, or people who listen to books on tape. The latter is especially beneficial to the blind and learning impaired. Besides reading Braille or having someone read to them, audiobooks may be the only source of reading material