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Rachel Truong
QuynhNhu Cox
English 300
13 September 2011
Summary on Carrs Article
Nicholas Carr wrote, Is Google Making Us Stupid? which explains how the internet
changes our brain and habits for reading long books, articles, and newspapers. Carr begins the
article by showing how his reading habits changed. Since starting to use the internet as a tool to
searching for information and more articles, the web has saved a lot of his time for searching and
gathering information for his writing. However, Carr no longer immerses himself in a book or a
lengthy article (Carr, 57). Normal reading requires a lot of attention and consumes a lot of time
and the mind will start to lose track, and lose focus of where it was left off. This effect is because
when people research on Google, they are using a form of skimming activity (Carr, 58) and do
not read the whole article. They lose interests after reading a paragraph and want to click back
out to find something more interesting. The internet is not only changed Carrs reading habits; it
also changes the way his mind functions. He said his mind isnt going (...) but its changing
Carr, 57). The computer made Carrs mind function like a computer and be more sensitive.
This habit occurs not only with Carr; it also occurs with his friends. Bruce Friedman, a
faculty member of the University Of Michigan Medical School, says theInternet has changed his
mental habits of reading. Now he almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish
article on the web or in print (Carr, 58). Even a blog with more than three or four paragraphs is
too much to absorb. The traditional way of researching for information from text books
consumes a lot of time and patience because of taking notes and keeping track of all the sources
to return to it later for referencing. A lot of writers choose to go online to avoid reading in the
traditional sense (Carr, 58). The internet has a lot of resources like videos and pictures that are
available at a single click of a button. According to the five years research program by scholars
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from University College London, they found that people using the internet are skimming for
materials. They will read no more than one or two pages of an article or (Carr, book 58) before
they would move on to a different article. Sometimes readers willsave a long article, but there is
no proof that readers will ever go back and actually read that article again.
In 1882, there is an invention known as the typewriter. Friedrich Nietzsche, an aging
writer who had trouble handwriting, and his typewriter had proven that technology helped him
and change in the style of his writing (Carr, 60). One of Nietzchesfriends told him that his
writing style became tighter, more telegraphic (Carr, 60) because of the typewriter. Nietzche
replied to his friends that writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts (Carr,
60). Carr agrees and explains that The human brain is almost infinitely malleable (Carr, 60).
His explanation meant that the human brain will continue to develop and it is easily to be
affected by any technology.
The well-known Google search engine company conducts thousands of experiments a
day and use the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find
information and extract meaning from it (Carr, 62). This means Google is trying to organize
and systematize information to change a persons view. They want to create a machine of
Artificial Intelligence, a search engine that is as smart as peopleor smarter (Carr, 62). It
indicates the faster we surf across the Webthe more links we click and pages we viewthe
more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed
us advertisements (Carr, 63). The main reason is for companies to distract the user and to sell
their products using advertisements and left over data left by people who search on-line.
The invention of the computer and the internet had a great effect on users such as writers.
It has many positive and negative effects of on-line information and technology that saves a lot
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of time for writers to do research. However, to Carr, those technologies made a huge change on
each users reading habits and the way theirminds functions. Carr believes that technologies will
make humanity function like a computer if we continue to use Google and internet.
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic Monthly.(2008):57-63. Print.