The Internet has become a great tool for our use in the pursuit of knowledge. Search engines like Google, allow us to instantly find information that we are looking for and therefore gaining almost immediate knowledge on a topic. However, recently there have been some people who believe search engines like Google are doing the opposite and instead are making us “stupid”, they believe that the Internet is replacing knowledge with information, and contemplation with efficiency. Such a person who has this believe is Nicholas Carr a contributor for The Atlantic.
Nicholas Carr wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. In his article Carr makes the argument that reading online is less thought provoking then reading books. In this paper I will focus on the various claims that Carr uses to support his argument. My analysis will focus on three claims that Carr makes: 1. The Internet causes us to be distracted; 2. The way we read on the Internet is changing the way we think therefore making us less contemplative; 3. The values associated with reading online are associated with efficiency and information gathering rather than knowledge and understanding.
The first claim that Nicholas Carr makes is that the Internet causes us to be distracted. He supports his claim with personal examples and stories of his acquaintances. Carr states that the Internet is full of ads, hyperlinks, and other media that is meant to distract us. He gives the example of someone reading the latest headlines in a newspaper site when suddenly a new e-mail messages announces its arrival with a tone of some sort he says that the “The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”
He goes on to say that this is not only seen in the Internet but it can also be seen in television shows, newspapers and other media not being presented online. He says, “As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations.” Carr says that this change has led television shows to add “text crawls and pop-up ads”, Carr also says that as a result newspapers have shorten their articles.
Tom Bodkins of the New York times says that by shorten their articles they “…would give harried readers a quick taste of the day’s news…” Carr makes the assumption that the reason why there are so many ads and hyperlinks in what we read is that “the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind” meaning that the more we click on the ads and hyperlinks the more money they make, not only will they make more money but they will gain “hits” which will move them higher on the list of results when typing an inquiry on Google.
Carr believes that the Internet was created to make us distracted and therefore changing the way we think. Another claim that Nicholas Carr makes is that the way read on the Internet is changing the way we think therefore, making us less contemplative. Carr supports this claim with an example of a literacy friend of his who confessed to have stopped reading books all together. When asked why, he speculates on the answer by saying that “I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?” Carr believes that reading online causes changes in the way we think, he does admit that he cannot prove this since no research has been done on the neurological and physical changes reading online does to our brains. Carr goes on to mention Maryanne Wolf who works as a developmental psychologist at Tufts University.
Wolf believes that when we read online we become “mere decoders of information”. I believe that Carr uses this example to give the illusion that when we read online we don’t truly gain knowledge but instead we just gather more information. Carr gives examples of experiments used to show the difference in mental circuitry between people whose reading is composed of an alphabet and those whose reading is composed of ideograms such as Chinese.
The experiments yielded various results with showed variations in the way they interpret visual and auditory stimuli as well as cognitive functions like memory. Carr draws from this experiment that “the circuits woven by our use of the Net” will differ from what our current circuits look like from reading printed books and other printed works. He goes on to evidence how the invention of the clock and time itself changed the way in which we think and act. He points that the invention changed us in such a way that instead of relying on our senses to tell us when to sleep, eat, go to work, or get up in the morning we instead “started obeying the clock”.
This notion makes it seem that somehow we will become so dependent on computers that we wont be able to make decisions unless the computer tells us to do so. He goes on to say that we at first used to say that our minds worked “like clock work” he now makes the assumption that we will start to say that our mind work “like computers” meaning that our minds will hold a vast amount of information but with no knowledge.
One of Nicholas Carr Final Claims is that the values of reading online are associated with efficiency and information gathering rather than knowledge and understanding. To support his claim he uses Scott Karp who admits to have stopped reading books all together. Karp says that his reason for reading online is “I’m just.
