Science makes life more organized with exploding knowledge by providing many blissful innovations. Among all, Internet is the most featured brainchild nowadays. It creates impact on every day’s lifestyle. People are more reliable on it day by day for every single work. The American writer Nicholas Carr who has published prize winning books on technology, business, and culture writes an essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that was originally appeared as a cover article in July/August 2008 issue of the “Atlantic”.
In that essay, Carr mainly focuses on the highly critical effects of internet on user’s perceptions. His leading argument on this essay is that the internet may create harmful effect on people’s perception that decreases the user’s mind capacity of concentration and contemplation. On the other hand, the freelancer journalist and blogger who is also the writer of “The New York Times” and “Wired” writes an essay “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” which is adapted from his book on same title.
In this essay the writer mainly makes an argument about how technology push people to change dramatically towards new forms of behavior. These types of changes are for the better because they are ushering in a new style of intelligence that is improved by the resources provided by technology. I really agree with Carr because technology not only makes our lives easier but changes the way we think. In the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” the writer informs how technology effects on our brain negatively.
From starting the author tries to clarify how people use the internet source for doing almost everything. As a result, people are becoming more dependent day by day to increase work productivity. This article also claims that technology also creates a huge distraction people’s everyday lives. By using technology, it is very easier and faster now to access any information in a shortcut way. In this article, the author tries to show that now a day’s technology is becoming more important than any other thing even people. “It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV” (321). It also makes people less intelligent. Now people do not have to think deeply about any topic as before when they are researching something.
Also, it narrows down the critical thinking, and makes them do more skimming than reading in researching huge article. Although technological advancement is proven as useful, it limits our bran capabilities by making people lazy. Furthermore, the social media can be misleading by considering the majority of users, honesty, and bulling. Besides, people are getting used to depend on mass media for many information; however, it is very necessary to become attentive because all of the information may not in exact form due to the authority’s mentality.
Eventually, the author wraps up his argument by describing how people are losing their ability to think critically by easily accessing internet, and machines are going to be superior as human. On the other hand, the author Thompson writes on his essay, “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” the digital technology changes the people’s cognitive behavior dramatically in a positive way. Thompson suggests three ways by which technology can change the way of thinking. Firstly, it provides enormous external memory.
Then, it makes easier to find the connection between things. Lastly, it encourages more for communication and publishing. In this essay, the author also clarifies that technology changes our mind by changing three aspect, such as cognitive behavior, the quality of cultural production, and the social science by which the task people do in every day’s life can be measured. Thomson’s main argument is that technology is not killing the own ability; it revives people in a new direction by stating, “Before computers, it was extremely rare for teenagers to become grand masters” (359). He also discusses the new way by which general people use the internet to express ideas with audience; as a result, they get improved on their ability.
This whole article follows the ancient theory of extended mind. This essay analyzes the connection between human and digital tools. This article is about general people who use the digital technological tools either Google or Social networking get the new way to learn, talk, and share new ideas and information each other. Eventually, Thompson wrap up by claiming that the features of digital tools will allow people to think more deeply and become more deeply connected with not only society but also individually.
To sum up, I totally agree with Nicolas Carr argument provided on the following essay that now people are getting habituated to browsing internet which reduce their reading and thinking capabilities. Besides, when we are scanning something from internet rather than reading or writing, its hard to say attentive through long time.
The analyzation of the article is quite pessimistic that people are losing their reading and thinking ability day by day by using internet in every aspect of lives. It does not mean that people are going to forget the letters to write; it means it changes the way of thinking and grabbing information from the past decades before the digital era. Now we are more depending on the machine rather than our self-ability which makes us less confident and lazy.
Though technology is considered as the blessing of our lives, it also limits our knowledge and thinking skill. Besides, by easily accessing data, students are more depend on internet rather than browsing library and reading book which not only damages their power but also pushes them to copy without understanding
. Overall, technological devices not only create positive impact in our life but also have pessimistic features which makes our brain artificial and damages our ability of thinking critically.