Reading Response #2

Brittany Ross

Engl 100 sec. f

Anna Wolff

In his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr worries about the possibility that the internet is re-shaping the way we think, read, and is quite possibly even re-mapping our brains. In one of the opening paragraphs of his lengthy essay, Carr states “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry”. Carr blames the fast paced internet for his feeling that someone is “remapping” his brain and shortening his attention span, so that he is now only able to focus on a few paragraphs of a singular text at a time. The way that the internet is setup for our accelerating society with instant keyword searches and abundant information at our fingertips, is damaging our ability to delve fully into, and comprehend longer, complicated pieces of literature. Carr goes on to give several antidotes of his colleagues experiencing this same occurrence, and also mentions some short-term and longer-term research that is being done to study this relatively recent development.

While some people like Wired’s Clive Thompson, claim that the Internet is having a positive and revolutionary effect on our literacy and brains, Carr seems to believe that the Web is beginning to hinder our ability to take in long passages of literature, stating that his brain now always expects to take in information the way it does on the Net, with fast paced skimming. I happen to agree with Carr’s thoughts on this matter. Before I started to use the Web extensively, I could immerse myself in a good, long book, and be caught up in its pages for hours on end. Now, I seem to be experiencing the same happening as Carr and apparently many others. I no longer can wrap myself around the long chapters and passages of my favorite books, without catching myself skimming through the words to catch a hold of the main point of the section I am reading.

Although Carr points out the disturbing findings of researches from esteemed universities that support his feelings of his brain processing information differently, he also acknowledges the greatness of the internet. He points out that “research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes”. While Carr seems to appreciate the convenience of the fast paced internet for his own research and writing purposes, he suggests that this is the cause of the so called re-wiring of our brains. This claim is central to the essay because it points out that once, when research needed to be done, scholars poured themselves over text books and articles to find the information they needed. Skimming has not always been an option. With the availability on the Web to search for key words, we simply skim to the small or perfect piece of information we need for whatever we are studying. This point helped me to understand the logic behind what Carr is stating in his essay, and it is also important because it is extremely relatable, especially to a student. This claim also perfectly illustrates the effect and change that the internet has brought upon our society. It is changing the way we write, speak, and now research is showing that is it changing the way we think! It is amazing how the most commonplace things in our lives can have such an effect on our culture, and even our minds.