Is Google Making us Stupid?

Introduction

In June 2008, the U.S. magazine The Atlantic has published an article by Nicolas Carr, “Is Google making us stupid?” This beyond the provocation deserves attention. Internet search engines that allow us to access the information it contains would profoundly change the way we work our intellectual and cognitive abilities deteriorate. Carr is not the first to make such remarks. I'd agree with Carr. It seems that the new generation is shocked by the number of fools around and seems quick to blame it on some latest innovation. Internet has undoubtedly changed the way of accessing knowledge. It has widely opened the field of information and data on which we work. Is it changing the way we work? Probably yes, to make us more stupid? The internet will make us somewhat less intellectually accomplished while improving the quantity and quality of our intellectual output, just as the printed books do. In short, it makes much more superficial, less able to concentration, contemplation and reflection, when we read a physical book.

Discussion

The net's cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing people from thinking either deeply or creatively. I do believe that the internet is damaging people's long-term memory consolidation that singles out as the true basis of intelligence. The internet means that we can never get away from ourselves, our temptations and obsessions. There's something depressing about knowing I can literally and metaphorically log on to the same homepage, wherever I am in the world. My internet use and corresponding brain activity follow a distinct pattern of efficiency. He attributes the loss of his powers of concentration, and I believe that it is true that the internet has changed our relationship to information and reading. The future that awaits us is not very encouraging if nobody has the ability to analyze or question where we are going, although Google Book Search is undertaking the enormous task of digitizing all books published with or without copyright.

I would also like to say that Carr has it mostly backwards when he says that Google is built on the principles of Taylorism. It shifts responsibility from worker to management, institutes a standard method for each job, and selects workers with skills remarkable for a job. Google does the opposite, shifting responsibility from management to the worker, encouraging creativity in each job, and encouraging workers to shift among many different roles in their career. Carr is of course right that Google thrives on understanding data. Technology is not the problem here. It is people's inherent character traits. The internet and search engines just enable people to be more of what they already are.

An effect on our neural structures

I believe that the most significant statement of the article is in the author's suggestion that after years of working online with search engines has changed the brain. That is, there is ignorance or laziness, but because the brain has made some connections and has stopped making others. A plausible argument if we ...