Is Google Making Us Stupid? p. 3

In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Good Making Us Stupid?” he claims that “the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of printed works” (3). In other words, our brains do different things depending on what types of media or text we are viewing. When we use the internet our brains adjust to work like the internet, jumping from one source of information to the next; however when we must view longer, more in-depth text our brains must again switch back to a different mode of operation. While one requires concentration and understanding, the other makes us accustomed to gaining only essential snippets of information. This can result literally in a rewiring of our brains, as he discusses in other sections of his article. On page 3 Carr refers to the German writer Friedrich Nietzche, who for most of his writing career wrote by hand. Once Nietzche’s eyes failed him, however, he turned to the typewriter to produce his works. This change in technologies made apparent changes in Nietzche’s overall writing as well, a friend of Nietzche’s said that his writing “’had become even tighter, more telegraphic’” (3). Nietzche did not disagree with his friend, he replied: “’our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts’” (3). Carr does not only use this anecdotal evidence to support his argument; he also quotes James Olds, a professor of neuroscience at George Mason University, who has determined that even the adult mind “’is very plastic’”(3). Meaning that our minds are almost infinitely adaptable when it comes to learning new things, while this may seem an amazing feat for the human brain, it will perhaps be an even larger challenge to recognize the changes and respond to them in a…responsible way.