Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” contains interesting points about how the internet changes our thinking, yet holds a counterpoint in its very creation. Introducing the article, Carr says that he and many others he speaks to cannot focus their attention longer than a few pages when reading, and if a blog has more than 4 paragraphs then he and the others will skim it. In short, he says that the internet has ruined his concentration. However, he wrote this article to be seven pages, published it, and I will assume expected it to be read. See the irony yet? This article claims that people cannot focus for more than three pages, but he contradicts his point by writing an article for more than three pages and anticipating people to read it. If he wholeheartedly believed that people will not focus because the internet ruined all people’s concentration, Carr probably would have kept his article very short.
Comparing logs with my classmates, I can almost back Carr’s point up that we do not focus much time on each page on the internet, which could be due to our lack of concentration or that we are looking for a fast find of treasure. On the logs, we see a lot of people using sites like YouTube or Facebook which they do not spend much time on; from experience, it may not just be the way that internet changes our thinking, but the particular website we are on. Countering Carr’s premise that people can no longer focus for long amounts of time because of the internet, I will point out that my classmates and I did spend a large amount of time on sites like Netflix, which does take focus to follow the plot of the show or the movie that they are watching. Now, Carr may point out that watching TV is different from reading, but it appears that my classmates spent a good amount of time on news websites which usually requires reading.
I do not think Carr is completely wrong in his analysis of how technology is changing our thinking, but I do think that Carr has blamed the wrong part of our culture. He points out that people are looking for the fast find or good information by using the internet which breaks our concentration. I disagree that our concentration is the problem. If concentration was the problem, Carr wouldn’t be able to write this well-worded article or people wouldn’t be able to watch movies. Instead of the lack of concentration being the problem, I think it is that the internet facilitates our laziness in our culture. Yes, I think that if a Literature Major cannot focus enough to read a part of his passion, he is lost and lazy. So, the internet is not the problem, it is people letting their own laziness get the best of them.
I like that you caught the irony in that too. I definitely lost interest after the third or fourth page. It wasn't because the second half was less interesting. I could have read the second half before the first and probably taken in the same amount of information. It just seems that I can't handle the repetitive nature of certain writing styles.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about lazy versus stupid. What if Carr's article had been titled, "Is Google Making Us Lazy?" I wonder how that would change the article. Scarier would be, "Is Google Making Us Stupid and Lazy?"
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