Nick Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” opens up the idea that the internet is not only a wide spread phenomenon that has changed ways in which people read, think, and communicate, but the internet is also changing the ways our brain is wiring and rewiring itself.
An important claim that Carr makes is that the use of internet has altered mental habits. He explains the ways in which human brains are able to wire and rewire itself based on current surroundings despite previous beliefs that as a person gets older, the less capable their brain is to adapt to new things. Carr states, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” By exposing himself to the Internet which throws new and different information at the user, Carr is realizing how the things he applies himself to are supported by his brain. Carr describes how immersing himself into a book would make him so focused on what he was reading before his use of the internet. Since a book was what Carr had been keen to for some time, his brain was literally wired to receive the ways in which he read a book—devoting time and concentration to it. Now that Carr devotes so much time and concentration to the Internet, his brain realized the change and starts to make changes to support Carr’s actions. I think this is an important claim to make because its adds solid scientific proof to his central claim. He has tested and proven data to support opinions and research.
Carr’s experience is almost identical to many others and supports his claim with others’ personal accounts and research, concluding that, “As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our ‘intellectual technologies’—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.” Essentially he is saying that just like picking up an accent or a habit of a roommate, extended time absorbed in a particular thing, including technology (like internet lingo, or the fast ways in which the internet encourages its users to jump around from site to site to find new bits of information) will rub off, leaving a new quality to a person.
Carr also claims that the human brain will become more like a computer and humans more like machines following algorithms set before them by the internet if technology is continued to be accepted as to how people experience and understand the world. Technology has aided in the idea that efficiency and speed are known as keys to success for a long time. Carr explains Frederick Winslow Taylor’s system of improving efficiency by breaking down larger tasks into smaller ones to be accomplished faster. Taylor implemented his system in a metal working factory in the late 1800s resulting, ultimately in a higher profit for the factory. Carr describes the current Google Headquarters as, “..the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism.” Taylor’s system is still being implemented into today’s current technologies. Google would argue with Carr that having the information of the world at one’s fingertips is an entitlement for living in this century, and strives to produce artificial intelligent-like Internet, claiming, “you’d be better off.” Evidence isn’t hard to come by for Carr, as what is frightening him, is being proclaimed from the rooftops of the Google high church. As Carr uses the ideas of Google as his evidence, he reasons skepticism he faces.
My camera has an auto focus and will switch its settings based on what it captures in the viewing window. Although our brains don’t rewire itself as quickly as my camera, I agree with Carr in that the ways in which we stimulate our minds will reflect in the ways our brain responds. Extended exposure to a certain way of reading and writing will stimulate our brain to make the most of its capacity, almost like the Taylor system. Carr also seems to think current technology like Google is out to get us—to attack and replace our brains, rather that supplement them. I think Carr is letting his own fear block the positive qualities of what technology has the opportunity to provide its society.
The human brain has its own applied Taylor system to utilize space productively based on situations we expose it to and information we provide.
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