Graves |1

Emma Graves

Mrs. Lohmeyer

English Composition 101

3 May 2017

Summary of Nicholas Carrs Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In his essay, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nicholas Carr argues that using the internet

for searching and reading is altering the way that we, as humans, read and process information.

He supports his argument with anecdotes on his own and others experiences reading and

searching information online and how it has altered their ability to read long texts, either online

or in print. Beyond the anecdotes, Carr also uses recent studies and skepticism of past writing

changes to express his argument.

To begin his argument, Carr compares 2001: A Space Odysseys HAL getting his brain

disconnected to how Carr feels when he reads long texts (313-14). While HAL says that he can

feel his mind going, Carr feels like his mind is changing (313). This change is that he can no

longer read long texts of information without becoming distracted and is no longer deeply

connected to what he is reading (313-14). Carr is not the only one who has noticed this change,

but many of his colleagues have expressed their concern for the change in their reading as well

(315). Bruce Friedman, a blogger that Carr used as an example, stated that, Even a blog post of

more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb, which is similar to what Carr and

many others are experiencing (315-16). The cause of this, Carr believes, is the internet and

spending time online (314). His reasoning for this is that after spending more than a decade on
 Graves |2

the internet tripping from link to link to find information or just switching websites and

scanning headlines and blog posts it has changed the way that he reads information (314-15).

Further support that Nicholas Carr presents is a study done by the University College

London on the research habits of people who were researching using the research sites operated

by the British Library and the U.K. educational consortium (316). The results of the study was

that many of the researchers would bounce from one site to another after only reading a few

pages of an article or book (Carr 316-17). The reading that the researchers were doing was

described as more of a power browse, (Carr 317). The browsing that the researchers did is

similar to what Carr admitted he has done while researching (314). To prove Carrs claim that

reading online is changing how he reads, Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist from

Tufts University, explains that reading online is distracting and changing deep reading to

decoding the information being read (317-18).

This is not the first time that change in reading and writing has caused our brains to adapt

to new technologies, Carr points out in his essay. He presents multiple past examples where

changes in the technology of reading and writing has changed and it has caused our brains to

adjust to the change. An example of one of these changes presented was the development of

writing and how Socrates, in Platos Phaedrus, believed that with the written word people would

begin to stop using their memory and would become ignorant (Carr 326). Which has in some

ways happened and even transferred into the effects of internet usage.

Carr concludes his essay with concern on Google creating artificial intelligence,

ultimately increasing the amount of technology in our lives and making us more dependent on

technology (323-26). He expresses that with the change in technology, like artificial intelligence,

will come the major effects on reading and human intelligence (327). To finish his essay on a
 Graves |3

somber note, Carr expresses his fear that 2001: A Space Odyssey is predicting a world where

human intelligence weakens towards artificial intelligence when they rely more on technology

(328).

Carr gave support to his claim that the internet is affecting reading and weakening our

intelligence with examples of his own experiences as well as the experiences of others with

reading, studies done by the University College London, and expert testimony by Maryanne

Wolf. Overall, the support that Carr shows proves that technology is effecting reading, the

beginning of a path that could be leading us towards our own weakening intelligence.
 Graves |4

Work Cited

Carr, Nicholas. Is Google Making Us Stupid? Ppt. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in

Academic Writing: With Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel

Durst. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015. 313-329. Print.