Title | : | Is Google Making Us Stupid? |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | - |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
Number of Pages | : | 16 |
Publication | : | First published July 1, 2008 |
The New York Times called it the article that "everyone is talking about." The essay served as the original inspiration for Carr's Pulitzer Prize-nominated book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." This edition of the essay includes an author's note on his sources. Approximately 5000 words in length.
Cover hummingbird photo by Dan Pancamo (www.flickr.com/photos/pancamo/) used under Creative Commons license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/).
Is Google Making Us Stupid? Reviews
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⋇⋆✦⋆⋇A Must-Read⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
This essay is mostly for those readers who remember the days before Google, but as someone who hasn't lived many years without Google, this was still surprisingly relatable. Does anyone else feel more impatient when reading online compared to reading offline? Is anyone else frequently tempted to open a laptop or phone? Does anyone else find it difficult to close a device even though you know you should?
Carr argues that the brain is able to reprogram itself, with "nerve cells routinely break[ing] old connections and form[ing] new ones". He explains how the internet is a place of distraction, from the hundreds of posts on your social media pages to the advertisements, banners, and sidebars spaced on nearly every webpage, and even to the slew of tabs that most people have open on their devices. "The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought," Carr says. "It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction." After all, the more links we click, the more information Google and other sites gains, and this information makes them money.
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☐ Everyone -
lmfao i take back telling mr puma to choke abt this. this was acc rlly good/informative and now im scared im becoming dumb 😍✨
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The article is an abstract of the writer's famous book "The Shallows" :
The perfect recall of silicon memory, can be an enormous boon to thinking
But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski
We are not only what we read, we are how we read
The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves
We risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button
As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence -
The general argument and conclusions presented are sound, but his manner of presentation leaves a bad taste. Ending your essay with a statement like 'as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence' is just... cringe. He further says that 'HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film... In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine', which is a really, really big reach. 2001 is about the ascendance of humanity, underscored by Dave's victory over the superintelligent machine HAL. The attempt to end on a poignant thought falls horribly flat, not only for missing the point of the movie but because of its inappropriate melodrama.
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i can see what he means but no.
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I had to read it for English 1301. I disagree with Carr because if you are very passionate about a topic you would not just skim through it. For example, I love fanfictions, and most f the fanfictions are long af. Since I love fanfictions, I read for fun and not as a chore. But if I had to read a two-page essay for school, I get very mad and skim through. Carr brought up points and proofs, and I enjoyed reading the essay. I would give it 3.5/ 5.