Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Nicholas Carr

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

Why did the author suggest that Google is making us stupid?

Nowadays, the internet is the most efficient marketing and media instrument available. It can
have a variety of negative and positive effects on people's everyday lives. Nicholas Carr argues on how
internet usage in the twenty-first century is affecting people's reading habits and cognitive focus in his
article. He underlines Google's role in this topic, as well as the consequences of making people more
machine-like. Carr also argued that internet reading has a significant impact on how people read books.
He focused on the online reading distraction that has the most impact on people's minds.

What are the ethical dilemmas discussed in the article?

The author pointed out that he and some of his colleague’s concentrations when reading a book
has significantly decreased. Moreover, he thinks that the cause for this disturbed concentration is the
modern internet usage, as he states “what net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for
concentration and contemplation”. Based on this statement, it is clear that the ethical dilemma in this
article is that google and the internet are causing members of the Western Society to lose their
attention span and their ability to think deeply about long pieces of text. The issue being the influence
on its user capacity to make their own affiliations and build up their own thoughts when analyzing a
large-scale text and persuade them to agree with him.

What is your view or stand on those ethical dilemmas?

Well, my personal view about these dilemmas is. The way we use things should be balance the
moment you need a piece of information from the internet (ex: information, recipe, or price of the
product you want to buy) you turn on your electronic device, whether it be a smartphone, desktop
computer or laptop. Then you find the information you were looking for and put the device back into
your pocket. Then you go back to living your life on real life. What browsing the internet is, it's looking
for nothing on particular, it's looking at the screen for distraction, entertainment, killing time and
boredom. Essentially bombarding your brain with information, it never asked for. Because that celebrity
gossips, hot girls on Instagram and watching random vids on TikTok will have absolutely no positive
impact on your life.