Sorry kids but Google is making us stupid :-/

As useful as a tool that Google is, I do believe it is making us  “stupid” according to Carr’s definition. Carr notes how our current types of Internet media supplies the “stuff of thought” and how this media “shapes the stuff of thought”. This is, in a nutshell, what Carr believes is making us stupid by using the Internet. He points out several correlations between the mind and how it works with the web, which I completely agree with. By using the Net on a regular basis, we are making our mind move swiftly and efficiently, just as the web does. Reading a text is no longer a drawn out process that requires elaborate thought and evaluation. The Internet and Google have transformed our brains into efficient tools that are searching for the correct answer. As a result, our brains are now skimming pieces of writing available on the Internet which is causing people to have a shorter attention span when it comes to reading any kind of literature. I can honestly say that I have often found myself reading a longer article online and taking a little break because I don’t have the patience to finish it in one sitting. The Internet is constantly having our brains switch focus from one thing to another. This allows our brains to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration, according to Carr.

            It is almost funny how blogs mimic and almost promote this type of thought process. This type of writing has a great deal of freedom, allowing the writer to jump from topic to topic whenever he or she pleases. The author has no guidelines or boundaries to follow, just as an Internet user has while on Google. The world has endless amount of information that we can tap into at any time, and in a sense, it is very similar to writing a blog. The writer can tap into the thought he or she has and run with it until they are done.

“Deep reading is indistinguishable from deep reading” – Maryanne Wolf