In “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr writes about technology and its effect on society, economics, and busines. In the beginning, the author recounts a scene from “2001: Space Odyssey.”, when the supercomputer Hal is begging for his life he is being dismantled. Carr can feel that there is something effecting his brain, not in a good way. And he knows exactly what is going on.
The Internet is like a godsend tool to support his career as a writer. So lately, he has been spending too much time online to take advantage of the Internet. However, the more he uses the Web, the more he has to fight to stay focused. Some of his friends, some bloggers also have the same troubles. A study of online research habits of University College London shows that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity.” They “bounce” from one source to another without reading anything more than 2 pages.
Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, worries that the Net will weaken the ability of reading and writing. She explains that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works. An example from 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche noticed the change in his writing style since he bought a typewriter. His already terse prose had become even tighter. James Olds, a professor at George Mason University, confirms that even the adult mind has the ability to reprogram itself in order to adapt with environment, which is, in this case, the Internet.
As a result, we are being robbed of our deeper thought processes. In the process of adapting to new intellectual technologies, humans unconsciously conform to the very qualities. When the mechanical clock appeared, people’s brain started operating like “clockwork”. We started deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep depending on the clock. As today, the Net is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. Next, Carr points to Google.
