Response 2

Aaron Noice
4/12/2010

A few years go in 2008, an article was published with The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. In it, he reviews the growing existence of the internet and Google, which seems to be growing at a rate as fast as the universe expands with no end in sight. With the internet’s vast size and millions of pages of information and other miscellaneous things, who has the time to actually read it all? Not many, now reading has turned into a sight skim, only flying over the surface instead of diving in.
For the many most don’t seem to notice the changes in life, the less likeliness to read a book, instead, sitting for hours surfing the web. But for me, all this information seems too much, like Nicholas Carr’s title for his article, the growing amount of information out there readily available unable to read it all, makes me feel stupid. My attention wanes, I can no longer read for more than 5 minutes at a time on any article found on the web. Carr points out in his article, this very thing which has been plaguing me as a reading. As Carr mentions a conversation he had with friends, me notes that when mentioned of this phenomenon they agree; 'The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing’. The funny thing about this is, Nicholas Carr’s article itself is long, and while reading it, I found myself fighting to read it due to length. I had to read it over time and in small chunks. It made me feel dumb, unable to read only ten pages, something I could have done 5 years ago. Apart from being unable to read articles and staying focus, Carr’s paper brings up the fact that reading books has become the same for many. He mentions a Pathologist by the name of Friedman who is experience a lack of an attention span. He explains; ‘I can’t read War and Peace anymore’. Stating he can no longer read a book, and not even a book that is an acclaimed novel. With this, I am agreeing with Nicholas Carr’s article, mainly connecting to its title in feeling that ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ Will there be a day were reading is in the past and we skim read? Scanning the pages looking for 4 or 5 key words then moving on? Are we destined to only get the generalized version of a paper or will we go as far to only write those 4 or 5 key works and move on?