Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Google is an internet search engine that allows users to find information on any given topic. Google was created in 1996 and has been one of the fastest growing sites ever since. Google makes it possible for any information that is needed to be available at the click of a button. Some people think Google is the best thing since sliced bread, but Nicholas Carr has another opinion. Personally, Carr thinks it could be dangerous to our minds having so much technology at our fingertips. If we go back to the early days, when the Internet was not available, people had to research deeper than they do now.They spent hours and hours in a library, searching through books and newspapers. As time progressed, society started developing and new inventions were made. Friedrich Nietzsche started using a typewriter after his vision started failing, and his writings began to change. He went from â€Å"arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style† (Carr 636-67). Frederick Taylor â€Å"created a set of precise instructions† that would have â€Å"maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output† for factories to use around the world (Carr 638).Taylor’s â€Å"system† made factory’s productivity soar. With these new ideas and inventions, the world began to change and now has come to a place where everything is relied on by the Net. â€Å"It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV† (Carr 638). Carr relates to the changes the Net brings to our lives. He says, â€Å"the Net is becoming†¦the conduct for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind† (634).He has stopped doing all the hard, time-consuming work that was once required to do as a writer. Using the Internet is the easy solution to finding out anything you need to know and Carr believes it is changing how his mind focuses and takes in information from any articles or essays he reads. The amount of time that a person stays on the Internet could have a negative effect on them. A person searching for information on the Net should limit themselves to a certain amount of time on it.Moderation is the key to protecting yourself and your brain from becoming completely dependent on the Net. Carr even confesses that he spends more time on the Net now than he ever has. Obviously, the Net is not completely awful. It helps find information so much faster and has articles so much easier to read. But, if we let the Internet reteach our brains how to think then we will have a problem. Carr is basically warning us that if we do not moderate our time on the Internet then the Internet will begin to control our mind and thoughts. Is Google Making Us Stupid? â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid? † In the article, â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid? ,† Nicholas Carr implies that he notices that something is causing his brain to change. He realizes that he is not thinking the way he used to think, especially during reading. While reading in the past, he explains how he would be able to engage in long articles or books, but now finds his concentration drifting away after just a couple of pages. He began to realize these differences since he has started utilizing the internet.Carr aims to convince his readers that our brains are trying to move at the same rates as the internet, skimming rather than completely soaking in new information. The internet is creating a new method of learning, much different from the traditional book or printed way of learning. Carr supports his belief by describing how intellectual activities are being replaced by technology, the development of the â€Å"one best method†, and Google’s motive to make the internet more accessible.Carr begins his essay with the example of Friedrich Nietzsche and his story of the typewriter. Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer, and classical philologist. He suffered from dementia after becoming paralyzed from a stroke. Losing his ability to write by hand, Nietzsche bought a typewriter and was able to write again. Carr uses him as an example because it showed how even though using the typewriter efficiently allowed him to write again, it changed the form and skill of his writing.Nietzsche was reprogrammed, but this time with a lesser software. This example shows that Carr is clever and witty with his comparisons. He provides another example that timekeeping instruments are taking place of our biological clock and people are relying on the clock rather than their own senses. This example corresponds with Carr’s belief that intellectual activities are being replaced by technology, or being reprogram med. Following his idea of reprogramming, Carr explains the development of the â€Å"one best method† created by Frederick Winslow Taylor.Taylor used this method to determine how each worker can use his time wisely enough to get their job done in the shortest amount of time. This example foreshadows another example that Carr uses later in his essay. This system that Taylor created directly relates to the structure of the internet today. It is apparent to the reader that internet programmers are trying to find the â€Å"one best method† to make all the information that one person could need as accessible as possible, in the quickest manner. Google is the internet at it’s finest.The final point that Carr discusses is Google’s effort to try to make the internet as accessible as possible because the faster we can use it, the faster they can market information that appeals to us individually. This is how Carr uses Taylor’s system to support the topic th at is at issue today. Carr explains how the co-founders of Google are pushing to make their search engine into an artificial intelligence. This addition in the paper intrigues the reader, making them curious about how far this will actually go.The point that Carr is trying to get across is that the skepticism on the development of writing and the invention of the printer, differs from the skepticism that we have today about the internet. Reading and writing causes our knowledge to expand into detail, while the internet causes our knowledge to expand into topics. Due to the assumptions that browsing the internet makes it hard to demand your full concentration for long periods of time, people are starting to feel as if they are becoming stupid. Is Google Making Us Stupid? Google is an internet search engine that allows users to find information on any given topic. Google was created in 1996 and has been one of the fastest growing sites ever since. Google makes it possible for any information that is needed to be available at the click of a button. Some people think Google is the best thing since sliced bread, but Nicholas Carr has another opinion. Personally, Carr thinks it could be dangerous to our minds having so much technology at our fingertips. If we go back to the early days, when the Internet was not available, people had to research deeper than they do now.They spent hours and hours in a library, searching through books and newspapers. As time progressed, society started developing and new inventions were made. Friedrich Nietzsche started using a typewriter after his vision started failing, and his writings began to change. He went from â€Å"arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style† (Carr 636-67). Frederick Taylor â€Å"created a set of precise instructions† that would have â€Å"maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output† for factories to use around the world (Carr 638).Taylor’s â€Å"system† made factory’s productivity soar. With these new ideas and inventions, the world began to change and now has come to a place where everything is relied on by the Net. â€Å"It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV† (Carr 638). Carr relates to the changes the Net brings to our lives. He says, â€Å"the Net is becoming†¦the conduct for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind† (634).He has stopped doing all the hard, time-consuming work that was once required to do as a writer. Using the Internet is the easy solution to finding out anything you need to know and Carr believes it is changing how his mind focuses and takes in information from any articles or essays he reads. The amount of time that a person stays on the Internet could have a negative effect on them. A person searching for information on the Net should limit themselves to a certain amount of time on it.Moderation is the key to protecting yourself and your brain from becoming completely dependent on the Net. Carr even confesses that he spends more time on the Net now than he ever has. Obviously, the Net is not completely awful. It helps find information so much faster and has articles so much easier to read. But, if we let the Internet reteach our brains how to think then we will have a problem. Carr is basically warning us that if we do not moderate our time on the Internet then the Internet will begin to control our mind and thoughts. ï » ¿Is Google Making Us Stupid? â€Å"The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV,† Writes Nicholas Carr in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? In Carr’s article, he examines the controversial issue of whether the intensive use of the Internet affects the human mind. Today, the Internet has become apart of and has affected a myriad amount of homes all around the world. From social networking, research, and even online shopping, the Internet is the main used device everywhere.When it comes to the Internet, the one thing that immediately comes to mind is the most common search engine, Google. Google is the most common multilingual and used search engine in the worldwide web, handling more than three billion searches each day. Many people think of Google as a gateway to the entire Internet. Goo gle helps people to get answers to questions without intellectually challenging themselves. This search engine has helped, and still does, many people around the world to research articles, tools for business; to contact one another, and many other life-applied sources in less than 1 second.Having Google grant us an effortless method in researching essentially anything helps us become unintelligent or in other words, stupid. The Internet is filled with all sorts of different distractions, and we all have a harder time with distractions. The information that we â€Å"learn† through the Internet helps us forget as we get older, and the Internet will only make it worse. These days it is indeed much easier to find information by searching online to get the answer or solution. Before Google was created, it was more challenging to research information by reading through encyclopedias or dictionary’s.In my opinion, researching by this method would help us gain more knowledge towards our lives. The effort given into researching through textbooks about the topic vs. using Google does help us gain more knowledge by helping memorize and understand the topic more efficiently and clearly. As in school for researching to prove a specific topic, teachers occasionally have a preference of not using a search engine since we never know what is true and to avoid plagiarism. Google on the other hand, would give us the answer even in detail, but we do not know if it is the right answer.Everything on the Internet is not always true. Google can, as well, make us intelligent. To become universally familiar with technology and how it is improving everyday can help us all with our lives in the future. For simple questions in areas like cooking, or safety, Google being available at the tip of our fingers is much more convenient to find and look for answers online than going to the library and use their dictionary’s every time. Having Google be there for us tends to lead us all in situations of procrastination, too.In Carr’s article, he writes about Google, †The Company has declared that its mission is â€Å"to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful. † It seeks to develop â€Å"the perfect search engine,† which it defines as something that â€Å"understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. † Having Google advancing more and more each day, adding more information, answering numerous amounts of questions, Google can also help us become more intelligent.In conclusion, the Internet is the most popular device, which is, used daily by millions and millions of people around the world. Google is the most used search engine over the world. This search engine helps us all become both unintelligent and intelligent. Google does help us become unintelligent by being filled with all sorts of distractions like social medias. But, Google does also help other s to be intelligent by convenience and learning about the advancing technology. ï » ¿Is Google Making Us Stupid? â€Å"The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV,† Writes Nicholas Carr in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? In Carr’s article, he examines the controversial issue of whether the intensive use of the Internet affects the human mind. Today, the Internet has become apart of and has affected a myriad amount of homes all around the world. From social networking, research, and even online shopping, the Internet is the main used device everywhere.When it comes to the Internet, the one thing that immediately comes to mind is the most common search engine, Google. Google is the most common multilingual and used search engine in the worldwide web, handling more than three billion searches each day. Many people think of Google as a gateway to the entire Internet. Goo gle helps people to get answers to questions without intellectually challenging themselves. This search engine has helped, and still does, many people around the world to research articles, tools for business; to contact one another, and many other life-applied sources in less than 1 second.Having Google grant us an effortless method in researching essentially anything helps us become unintelligent or in other words, stupid. The Internet is filled with all sorts of different distractions, and we all have a harder time with distractions. The information that we â€Å"learn† through the Internet helps us forget as we get older, and the Internet will only make it worse. These days it is indeed much easier to find information by searching online to get the answer or solution. Before Google was created, it was more challenging to research information by reading through encyclopedias or dictionary’s.In my opinion, researching by this method would help us gain more knowledge towards our lives. The effort given into researching through textbooks about the topic vs. using Google does help us gain more knowledge by helping memorize and understand the topic more efficiently and clearly. As in school for researching to prove a specific topic, teachers occasionally have a preference of not using a search engine since we never know what is true and to avoid plagiarism. Google on the other hand, would give us the answer even in detail, but we do not know if it is the right answer.Everything on the Internet is not always true. Google can, as well, make us intelligent. To become universally familiar with technology and how it is improving everyday can help us all with our lives in the future. For simple questions in areas like cooking, or safety, Google being available at the tip of our fingers is much more convenient to find and look for answers online than going to the library and use their dictionary’s every time. Having Google be there for us tends to lead us all in situations of procrastination, too.In Carr’s article, he writes about Google, †The Company has declared that its mission is â€Å"to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful. † It seeks to develop â€Å"the perfect search engine,† which it defines as something that â€Å"understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. † Having Google advancing more and more each day, adding more information, answering numerous amounts of questions, Google can also help us become more intelligent.In conclusion, the Internet is the most popular device, which is, used daily by millions and millions of people around the world. Google is the most used search engine over the world. This search engine helps us all become both unintelligent and intelligent. Google does help us become unintelligent by being filled with all sorts of distractions like social medias. But, Google does also help other s to be intelligent by convenience and learning about the advancing technology. Is Google Making us Stupid? What is the main claim/thesis?The main claim, or thesis, is that the more dependent we become with computers and other technology, the more our own intelligence declines and the more brain-dead we become. According to Kubrick’s dark prophecy, by using this technology to understand different aspects of the world, we are generating artificial intelligence.What are the means of support for the claim?The means of support Carr uses are personal testimonies, examples, and appeal to logic and value. He uses himself as a support because he admits to being a victim of his argument, he says â€Å"for more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet. A few Google searches, some quick clicks, and I’ve got the fact or quote I was after.† By stating this, he is showing how easy it is to become caught up in the convenience of the internet.He uses himself as an example becaus e most Americans can relate, and understand where he is coming from. Everyone knows that Google, or other internet search engines, make gathering information easy, however many do not realize what it is doing to their brains. Carr uses fact and an example of research done by scholars of the University College London, who were a part of a five year research project to explain how much our research habits have changed over the years. Carr’s writing causes reader’s to use logic and values when thinking about how often they use the internet, and what they are using it for.Do the support strategies sufficiently prove the thesis?The support strategies that Carr uses support his thesis to an extent. He explains how technology is ruining our brains, but he also contradicts himself by pointing out how regularly American’s use technology, and how often we need it for everyday tasks. His support strategies may have been better if he used more facts, or research done on why technology is destroying our brains with artificial intelligence.â€Å"The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive†, this statement Carr makes contradicts his argument in a way because it shows that since we have access to bigger hard drives and fast processors outside  of our brain, we should be using it. He does not intend to sound hypocritical; however his way of appealing to logic goes against his argument because as humans, we have come to accept the new forms of technology and the fact it could be destroying our brains.How does the argument address opposing claims? Are those claims sufficiently refuted? The argument addresses opposing claims in a logical way. Carr gets personal with the readers, in a way that they understand what he is talking about and where he is coming from. The opposing claim, being we need technology, was not addressed on a level where humans will go against using it. He explains that by usi ng the internet, we are gaining artificial knowledge, but losing our real knowledge.I think there are some people who will be shocked by this and by reading about how technology is changing us, but for the most part I think America has become okay with the idea that our brains are decreasing, while our use of Google is increasing. We have accepted the fact that soon we will be full of ‘fake intelligence.’ Does the argument concede to outside positions? What is the effect of those concessions? The argument Carr makes puts the outside position into perspective. The concessions show that Carr acknowledges, and has an open mind to the opinion of others. He values that American’s do need some basic technology, and that it can be very useful, while he also states that it can come to be a problem when it controls our lives. Does the writer define the issue correctly?The writer does define the issue, as the more dependent we become on technology the more brain-dead we be come, correctly. He does a good job of explaining what is happening, and the different psychology and neurology effects the internet has.What is the warranting assumption?The warranting assumption is that by only depending on technology and internet for our understanding of the world, our real intelligence is likely to decrease, while we gain artificial intelligence.Is the assumption acceptable or arguable?This assumption is questionable, because while there is evidence showing more people are depending on technology, there could also be arguments that some internet sites increase our intelligence. Can I prove the assumption is incorrect?Yes, there are ways to prove that technology is helpful, and has a positive effect on society. For example, without the improvements in technology we would not have the information or access to advances in energy, medicine, cures for diseases, or education.What else does the author of the argument assume?Carr assumes that all people have access to n ewer technology. He believes that it is common for everyone in the workplace to have new cell phones, and computers. He also assumes that humans depend on technology for everything, which is why Americans have become more oblivious to things happening around them. He believes that everyone will fall into the trap of internet, and in a way will become hypnotized by it, when in reality, many people may not even have access to the internet or the new technology.