Are We in a Race Against the Machine?
In the text, Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr, the author, tries to describe how the internet has become the learners’ primary information source and has started to affect the individual ability to read books and other lengthy pieces of information. Carr’s case about the use of technology is clear facts from real people. Carr poses a question about whether the Internet has made people more ‘artificial’ and dispersed in their thinking approach. The most shared search engine renown as Google has allowed the learners to discover information instantly, whereas skipping the critical process of understanding the reading concept by applying some pathos, logos, and ethos in the text in an effort to justify his idea adequately but fails to convince the target audience.
Author Carr analyzes the effects of excessive internet usage in learning, where he argues that individuals are capable of understanding a lot of new things simultaneously through internet usage. Nevertheless, this aspect lacks a positive perspective on human thinking capacity.
The critics of Carr’s argument suggest that it is outlandish to complain about a situation that has been self-created since this is a self-inflicted weakness sign and indiscipline rather than victimhood. Besides, the author further blames it all on ” software coders and computer engineers” who invent technologies such as Google, which is making most people “stupid” (Carr 92). Indeed, to this extent, the critics say that Carr profoundly misinterprets the problem nature by pretending that one can blame others such as the programmers, an individual unwillingness to think hard and long as only a symbol of how the issue itself resides within individuals. However, according to some critics, failing to choose to consider carefully is ultimately a self-inflicted problem. In fact, if that aspect becomes an individual’s problem, such a distinct lack of anybody to blame but only themselves, as per the critics. However, in supporting his argument, the author uses pathos in the text when he says, “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore…I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (Carr 89). The reader is provoked with emotions by depicting how his reading concentration has been limited to a few pages of a book, contrary to the past, and he is now struggling to read just because of the introduction of search engines such as Google.
Additionally, other critics state that Carr’s text is engaging, but the aim is somewhat off since on one side, he is probably correct that most tend to sample a lot of information from the Internet’s information buffet, resulting into epistemic indigestion. people ought to be rather reading plenty of book, including extra classics or so. On the other side, the author seems erroneous to present the issue as a shared, techno-social problem, beyond the individual control, an issue to be answerable on the programmers, and treated mostly by technocrats or social psychologists instead of the humanists and philosophers. On the same note, Carr further uses ethos to depict how the internet had adversely influenced the reading capacity. For instance, Carr (90) writes, “it is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed, there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.” The author here further is credible with his information by offering reliable information on how internet technology is ever-changing and attracting more users. They tend to avoid the usual traditional way of reading.
Moreover, the notion that makes people stupid the pretense that technological change has been a self-directed process that would proceed in its preferred direction independently of people. It is definitely true that specific technologies can make someone stupid and certainly there exists digital technologies that do not bring out the greatest or liveliest aspects of the human nature. However, the single thought that play the most to render the technology worse is the notion that there is single axis of choice. Contrary, the author attempts to use logos while driving his argument about how the internet is hindering the traditional but significant reading skills. Carr (92) affirms that “in the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy. As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” Here, the reader can see how the author is logical in his point of view by quoting the moment when the internet has started to bring change in the world of learning. Human intelligence has somewhat become an artificial one due to over usage of internet in education and even in research work. However, the digital experiences designers should rejoice when such articulate critic arises along, since that is a vital step in producing digital stuff to become better.
Ultimately, Carr gives the impression to write this article in expectations of warning readers of the intellectual risk technology can inflict in order to alter society’s reliance on such technologies. For Carr’s personal tone, it appears as if the author is writing the article for a wide audience consisting of anybody who frequently uses personal technology. The author fails to successfully convince the reader to understand his personal notion about the adverse effects of excessive use of the internet. However, the author sends a warning to the public regarding how the structure of the incredibly articulate and educated personality constructed with an exclusive version of the whole West heritage can ruin individual thinking capacity. But now the public should be on the ground to observe how the replacement of intricate inner knowledge with the new sort of self-evolving easy information accessibility overload pressure due to the instantly available technology. In fact, Nicholas Carr is right in discerning that something is making people stupid, but it cannot be Google. It is high time to think of Google as a significant life preserver, which has been thrown in a mounting flood, which is used to stay on the flood surface, not for the laziness sake but for survival.
Work Cited
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google making us stupid?.” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107.2 (2008): 89-94.