Nicholas Carr is a columnist for the guardian and the industry standard. He earned a B.A. from Dartmouth and an M.A. from Harvard. Carr is the famous author who is responsible for the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In the article Carr uses description, narration, explanation, and cause/effect modes to notify his readers about how technology is taking over the world and how the internet is handicapping our brains.
Workers all over the world are being replaced with software and the worldwide computer is unleashing. The author uses description to inform us that technology is expanding in the world and there isn’t enough room for the both of us in the labor industry. Carr explains, “As the divide widens between a relatively small group of extraordinary wealthy people… and a very large set of people who face eroding fortunes and a persistent struggle to make ends meet” (336). He is expressing how some people are barely surviving out here in the world due to job loss. This describes that “the interplay of technological and economic forces rarely produces the results we at first expect” (Carr 336).
Carr argues that “media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the thought process” (337). He uses narration and description to inform us that we are losing depth in our thinking because of the internet. It is handicapping our brains because now our minds are expecting to take in information the way the internet is distributing it. Carr explores that “the net seems to be chipping away [his] capacity for concentration and contemplation” (337). This only proves that the internet is disabling our brains.
The internet is also changing the way we think. Carr uses narration, description, and explanation to inform us that our thought process is being hindered and not in a good way. According to Carr, “over the past few years something has been tinkering with his brain” (337).
His concentration starts to drift after only reading a few pages and he has to drag his brain back to the text. This is an indication that the internet has transformed his mind in a negative aspect.
Carr believes that “the net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through [our] eyes and ears and into [our] mind” (337). He uses explanation to explore how the internet obstructs our minds. The more we use the web, the more we have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Carr also describes how “the internet has altered his mental habits” (338). The internet has made it to where he can’t focus and this strengthens the point that it’s transforming our minds.
As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. Carr uses description and explanation to define that the internet is not only taking over the world, but it is also taking over brains. Carr also mentions “pancake people-spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button” (344). We may not realize it but the internet is changing us into “pancake people”,
In conclusion, this article informs us on how the internet is taking over our minds and the way we process information.
