Is Google Making Us Stupid?

There is no doubt about it that we are in the age of knowledge. Carr goes in depth and he illustrates the differences between now, and yesterday due to the Net. It seems that 200 page books are always increasing in length; even if the page number stays the same.

I was able to have a couple laughs throughout the article about how much my mind wonders during long, focused readings. Once upon a time, I really enjoyed reading, but now I am staring at a tall mountain for the book review. The article helped understand what happened, and that I am not alone in my deficiency in reading. Carr makes reference to Scott Karp, a lit. major in college, who gave up reading books altogether due to the convenience of the Internet.

This one article alone took me about four days to read. Maybe it was the amount of time that we had to read it, or that the article was a constant reminder that I am a mindless drone. I read it in one or two page increments per day; however, I would have been able to do it all in one sitting at the height of my "reading days."

I can see how the Net has undermined my reading ability, but I could not help but feel a little frustrated with the article. At first it was humorous how I was able to connect so well with the first three pages. But the article only seemed to bring up on point: the Net is evil. I thought that it was very one-sided. The author found a way to comment on how every milestone in human inventing history, somehow made us more mindless and less independent. He even found a way to make clocks seem evil. Carr made it seem like the results of the Net's influence on the world is negative. I see the results of the Net as the solution for the quest of knowledge.

It seems to me that life in this era goes by so much faster than it did in previous years. What I mean by that is that students, for example, are expected to know an incredible amount more than previous generations. It seems that the only way accomodate this demand is to skim through pages and find relevant information. The bottom of page two says that the British Laboratory and a U.K. education consortium conducted studies on how people read written information. The use of skimming was evident. I believe that skimming was found, because that is how one has to read in order to keep up. To illustrate my point, did anybody read the every word for the reading portion of the ACT? I didn't and I got a decent score.

All of the special interest groups in the world can protest on how the Internet is making us "stupider," but I will always say that the Internet is aiding us into the future. What we do today will affect tomorrow, and if I have to skip a couple pages to get through the night, I think I will sleep very well.