Reading Response #2

In Nicholas Carr’s essay, “Is Good Making Us Stupid?” he asserts that the overuse of the ‘Net has affected us permanently. Our brains aren’t thinking vertically (deeply, that is) anymore. Rather, we’re delicately skimming across the surface of long and intense readings. As Carr says, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Although he doesn’t say so directly, he does infer in that sentence that all of mystical and interesting things are under the surface—but most of us are too focused on the instant entertainment that we receive from reading things that don’t go far under the surface. Basically not thinking is a lot easier (and less boring) than doing so. By what he says, I believe that Carr is trying to get his readers to consider that the way our brains are changing [because of the internet] is indeed, not for the best.
One claim that Carr also makes is, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” What he means by this is that we’re putting our attention into things that aren’t very important, which in turn, has been changing our brains permanently. With that being said, Carr also argues that the brain is "almost infinitely malleable", and that the brain will adjust to the way we use tools or technology. Carr, using research by James Olds, a neuroscience professor, shows that the brain's nerve cells "routinely break old connections and form new ones" meaning the brain "has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions". This is important as it gives scientific information on how the brain changes.
Nick Carr makes very interesting claims of how the internet has changed the people who use it, and instead of the internet adapting to us, we are adapting to it, in which we now think the way the Net does. My experience of growing up with technology and computers has confirmed this statement. Internet has become such an everyday part of our population’s daily routine that we don’t realize the influence it is having on our lives. At first the internet took the place of using books for research. However, now that it has become a part of our society’s lives it is slowly turning into more and more things. Not only do we use it for research now but we also are able to watch videos, listen to music, go shopping, and tons of other activities. Showing that Nick Carr’s theory is correct, the internet’s influence on our population is slowly affecting not only us (humans) but it is also affecting the internet itself, because it is causing it to continue to grow to meet our needs, thus replacing other useful inventions.