Summary – Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? discusses how much of an impact the advancement in technology has on the way we function. He discusses how research used to consist of hours in a library, trolling through books, and now its just typing a few words into Google and finding what we were looking for within seconds. Carr discusses how even he can no longer become deeply interested in an article if it’s over a certain length, and even still he finds himself skimming it for key points. He compares what life was like before the internet. The internet has taken over everything, and we understand this when Carr writes, “It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our type writer, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and our TV”. Everything from ads to newspaper articles are being shortened to be keep the attention of the reader since we no longer have the attention span we once did. His main point is that our intelligence has turned into “artificial intelligence” and is no longer our own. It is based solely on the internet.

Response – One quote I found interesting was “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”. Comparing the way he used to read to diving into a sea of words as opposed to reading now, zipping along the surface is effective for explaining how reading has changed. Before moving to technology, Carr could read passage after passage from a book and stay completely focused and became immersed in what he was reading. Now, after adapting to technology, he finds himself skimming through passages online, looking for key points without having to go into depth. When i was younger, before being introduced to the World Wide Web, I could sit and read for hours on end. I could become completely immersed in whatever i was reading and could use my imagination to think about what the characters and setting would look like. Now, everything is based in the internet. Textbooks and readings for school are posted on the internet, articles are on the internet. When I read things for school I tend to skim through, highlight key points and do not read the text as a whole, or become deeply interested in what I am reading.

Reflection – This text has made me realize how much the internet and technology has changed the way we function. We rely on google for everything and do not make ourselves think enough. As a writer, I think it is important to become submerged in a text if you want to be able to write effectively about it. If I spent a huge chunk of my life writing a book just to find out that people skimmed through it or searched for the sparknotes version, it would feel like I wasted my time writing it because no one appreciated it. If we want to be effective writers, we also have to be effective readers.