Is Google Making Us Stupid? Reading Response #2

I think that Nicholas Carrs' whole project in this essay is to show how Google and the internet are changing the way we read and think about things. Instead of traditionally reading boring books, we are now not interested in them at all. For example, if they are a literal masterpiece, they are being ignored or skimmed over due to the fact that thats the way the internet shows us how to read.

Carrs' central claim in this essay is the internet is changing the way we read, the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. He demonstrates the fact by saying: Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. And he states that he isn't the only one, when he mentions his troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances-literary types, most of them- many say they're having similar experiences.

One of Carrs' subsequent claims states, It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; Indeed there are signs that new forms of "reading" are emerging as users "power browse" horizontally through titles, content pages and abstracts going for quick wins.
It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense. Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist of Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, has stated "We are not only what we read, but how we read," she indicates. And when we read online, she says, we tend to become "mere decoders of information." I have never been a great reader, because I seem to miss alot of the idea of the books I'm reading, or trying to understand, maybe by reading online we are losing more fundamental objectives that a great book is trying to show. As with everything nowadays, technology is here and booming, Americans have been stereotyped "lazy," and if they can get away with the bare minimum of requirements, they will.

I think his claim of reading online compared to reading traditionally is very important. There's always distractions online and eventually you'll find something more fun and exciting to do, but when you read in a quiet room, library, etc... and read traditionally you seem to get more out of what you are reading, with no distractions. It fits with the rest of the essay by pretty much comparing the human brain and computers. Like a computer, James Olds, a professor of neuroscience, who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University states, "The brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions." Also, the faster we surf across the Web-the more links we click and pages we view-the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and feed us advertisements.

In conclusion, I don't think its Google that is making us stupid, I just think we are learning different ways of reading and writing via the internet. If you truly had to read a long and dull type of book or story, don't do it on the internet, unless you don't want to get the total understanding of what is written. Reading a short or basic essay or story can still be read on the internet, and we will still understand it.