Comments on: Nick Carr: Is Google making us stupid?

The human brain is malleable. As we use Google are we becoming Google? Do we really want that?

[tim.hendo]

Don't blame Google -- blame Dostoevsky for your desertion of books. What a dreary, pretentious writer! If you like Russian lit, try Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or a nice Nabokov.

[geneven]

Like you can sum up the (de)merits of Dostoevsky in a couple of words. You might express your opinion to some Russians who have actually read and understood him and see what they say.

The fact is that some people aren't ready for certain books when they encounter them. Worse yet, they are often forced to read them when they aren't in the right frame of mind, something that creates hatred of literature. This has nothing to do with Google and lots to do with the culture that surrounds us -- non-computer culture.

[queisser]

I read the article (on paper!) and it's actually more nuanced than the comments here make it seem. All the arguments about previous Luddites (invention of writing, printing press, etc.) are presented and there's some forward looking optimism.

I think part of the problem is that writers that aren't techy types maybe struggle more with Google than people working in harder sciences that can quickly separate junk from valuable information.

[exxpostfacto]

Why are people so afraid of information evolution? Like it has been stated in other comments, the internet, especially Google, allows accessing and digesting information exponentially faster than ever before. Google is much more likely to make us all smarter by allowing us to part from our biological setbacks (memory!) and plug into a computer. Expand your consciousness by not being scared to be smarter. If you must cling to your books, you will die out, and the ones that know what your book is about AND what a thousand other people have to say about that book (faster than it took you to actually read the pages) will continue to evolve. Oi, the naive!

Humanity would be vastly superior if we could remove our short (and long) term memory completely and replace it with a Google computer chip that made us all smart. And if we could minimize our need to communicate down to zero characters (we're already moving towards 140) we would all be better off as well. Just because it is new and scary and totally different and not even rational by current standards doesn't mean it is DEFINITIVELY better.

Don't make rules for yourself, just be smart.
Thanks Google!

[GlenMoriarty]

Really interesting post, I just read a great book - Smart World - that addresses some of these issues - like how we are offloading some of our cognition to not only theories, or paradigms, but to services like Google. The book is worth checking out if you have an interest in these sorts of things. It definitely has a lot of ramifications for the education. We are exploring some of these at nixty.com.

[exxpostfacto]

Also, I'm all for reading. There is nothing like reading a book to expand and culture your mind. You will be able to confront problems more easily if you can handle a thick book, but if you can understand that AND understand the internet, you are incredibly more intelligent than someone who is handicapped by sticking to a single medium.

[gbrandonthomas]

I disagree. Fragmented attention is a short-term issue. Using the same tenants of Anderson's "Free" argument, offloading aspects of our brain processes to technology allows us to focus on other activities, still uniquely accomplished by the human brain. Just as when something becomes free, such a newfound freedom opens up a whole host of yet unforeseen opportunities. We won't know what it means until it happens, as our ability to predict and comprehend beyond is limited.

Thus, upon the shoulders of giants we again will stand...

For more, see www.gbrandonthomas.com.

[dangrsmind]

In a recent Alertbox Jakob Nielson's discussesa study in which 76% of the people failed to be able to use Google to conduct a simple search task. Are the 24% who succeeded in the search smart or stupid? And did Google make them that way?

(http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designer-user-differences.html)

[dangrsmind]

I reversed the precentages in my posting. 76% were successful, 24 % failed.

[jwp-cat]

Were we less 'stupid' in the 19th Century, when most Americans were marginally literate and our main discourse was in the medium of political cartoons?

Someone who knows how to use Google can uncover much better quality information than someone who does not. Any of us who have been using the web for a decade can attest to the ebb and flow of quality information and sources. Many university db and other sources have gone '404' while commercial drivel proliferates. Google is an engine, it does not make the fuel. Content and its sources is the most subversive factor as the web goes truly global, and corporate.

The other troubling issue of the demos of information (that's the Greek 'demos') is that it will tilt toward trivia and pop culture. Where academic applications come into play, the structure of the engine tends to be over specific.

Books, and other printed data, not to mention visual, still make up a shifting and small fraction of what is accessible on the web, especially freely.

[wisedriver]

Many years ago I came across a tidbit that has stuck in my head for, well, many years. Maybe it was in a magazine, newspaper or some kind of book. The tidbit was that tapioca was poisonous and before it could be eaten the poisons had to be leached out. I've never followed up on the veracity of that but consider the long and horrible death that can home from eating a poisonous mushroom. I mentally put that killer 'shroom next a psychoactive mushroom and wonder "How did those early peoples learn what to eat, what to avoid?" How in God's name did 'primitive' people learn that ingesting plant A, alone, will make you sick and plant B, alone, will make you sick but if you put A and B together, in the right proportion, and brew it, you come up with a concoction that not only makes you puke and crap all over but takes you into other realms of the spirit, AKA ahyuasca o yage. My 2 cents is that our wonderful techno-toy world is helping increase delusion, driving us deeper into a spiritual WalMart, a state void of wisdom and compassion. This is the burning house, friends...

[videography]

Google search makes a mockery of context and on occasion rewrites history. For example google [leaving the quotes] "There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening".

If anyone can actually find the real author and name the work in which the quote appeared . . . please post it here. Hint! It is not Marshall McLuhan.

This test doesn't show that Google search is making us stupid. It shows that the Google search algorithm is flawed and the flaw is making us into a homogenized bunch of what we call "vidiots". There is a big difference.

Bob Kiger
Videography Lab

[gstern1994]

As a public school teacher I have to say you're full of sh@t. Public schools are the backbone of American education, flawed for sure, but incredibly important. Instead of a rant against intellectualism and progressive thinking you might want to do some research on the points Carr asserts.

He does not dispute the awesomeness of Google but rather touches on the fact that the web provides the brain with a crutch that over time encourages cerebral apathy. I can certainly attest to this with my students, if they cannot Google it and read some blogger?s paragraph on their topic and be done with it, it?s too much of a burden.

You my friend already have a developed brain and are using the internet as a tool for expediency and convenience, the student?s of today have only known the internet and are prone to the shallowness and ADD it encourages without intervention.

[mlstrickland]

Several years ago a similar thought emerged that PowerPoint changed the truth. Essentially it said the more complex and compelling the PowerPoint presentation the more the information was believed to be true.

Sadly a few years ago I worked for a German owned company and they had a PowerPoint "artist". He created presentations that were compelling and appeared to be filled with facts. For those presentations where I had direct knowledge of the facts they were frequently represented with a specific slant that was not always truthful.

Bottom line --- Technlogy should be a tool to provide more diverse points of view but there is no substitute for a critically thinking human brain. If we let Google, PowerPoint, or any other thing take over those critical thinking skills --- Yes they make us "dumber" or at least prejudiced that what we see and read must be the "truth".

[b_baggins]

It takes a significant amount of brain power to make a cogent point in a sound bite. The fact that most people can't do it is proof. Concise writing has always been the goal.

And, wordy books are not automatically intellectually superior. Dickens was verbose because he got paid by the word.

[jabailo]

The "computer" is reading...it is primarily a "hot" medium -- in the McLuhan spectrum. The Internet and the Web are text. Studies have shown that most people ignore "graphics" and banners and focus on the text. Working on the computer means reading and writing. The writing part of it has probably increased intelligence fantastically in human society.

[bbains]

Twitter: I think its more a sign of a growing narcisistic culture than anything else. Isn't Nick Carr the guy who wrote that IT Departments were useless and outdates back in 2001 or 2002? He was pretty far off on that one, and I don't see much relevance to this article either.

[karlmarx13]

No one proclaimed Google makes us stupid,
it was a question, and the title of a book interestingly enough.

By definition Stupid is lacking intelligence, as opposed to being merely ignorant or uneducated.
I think in many cases intelligent people can still be ignorant,

It isn't being a Luddite to question technology, and it doesn't imply that your more evolved because you embrace technology any more then developing the ability to send a man to Mars implies progress.

But if you don't understand the concept of a search engine
and why the results you get occur, your at most ignorant. Google can be filtered of content, results can be adjusted, threw web techniques and web pages can be blocked by administrative requests to Google.

I would recommend cross referencing your facts, and not just blindly parroting your emotional laden comments about what being evolved or measurements of progress. Further more just because you were born after the Internet, does not justify not reading printed material.

if you simply accept the myriad of proclamations of truth coming from the one source, or accept only one possible concept like Internet good books bad or vice versa, then you have in fact become an automaton, subservient.

Your reasoning and abilities to discern
will in fact retard. If you cross check yourself and develop the ability to question and investigate
only then will you approach the truth of a concept.. But alas it was not the Internet that taught people blind acceptance, that has been going on for centuries.

Getting defensive and resorting to condescending or sarcastic or ignorant attempts to criticize the other side only shows your not really interested in truth so much as you are defending that your right and the other is wrong.

a perfect example of programmed acceptance showed up in a comment by
BIGELLOW: Who was so incensed that someone could question Internet search technology they devised this very interesting
piece of argumentation.

"Should we call ourselves "stupid" because we have forgotten how to take care of ourselves and rely on doctors?"

In defending technology they suggest we should be reliant on someone else for keeping us healthy?
I'm sure we would all admit that yes it's probably a bit stupid to ignore or abuse our health...

The ability to discern fact does not come from not questioning.

Carr's book wasn't calling anyone or anything stupid, he is suggesting that it may in fact BE stupid to simply embrace one mode of thought.
And by some of the comments on this subject I've read here. I can safely say he is correct.

[ScaryMonkey69]

I'll take a "book learner" over a "google learner" anyday. Books mean you took the time to read & understand the subject. With the Internet & Google, you just type in something & get some tidbits of info so you sound "educated". Books = reading, re-reading, memorizing.

[tbonespop]

Memorizing? ROFLMAO! Memorizing is, in most cases, useless. The important things that you need to know are naturally memorized. If you need to remember something for later, write it down...no memorization required. If you need to take a test to pass a class, memorize away (most people aren't taking classes, they're working). If you need to know something that hasn't previously been memorized, Google it.

"Book learner" means nothing to me. Give me a person that knows where to find the information and how to communicate it back to me instead of a person that attempts to clog their heads with useless minutae to prove has smart they are.

[kwaldman]

He might be correct -- the ancient greeks use to practice fantastic memory techniques where they could memorize long stories/speechs. Plato suggested that writing would hurt people's ability to memorize. Pros and Cons of everything I guess.

http://www.ellopos.net/education/plato-writing.asp?pg=5

[esziszi]

I don't think the author meant that Google brings lack of information. Rather, it doesn't exercise the mind as much as books do, thus the mind starts not to think as well as it used to. TV has the same ill effect.

I don't know how the others get it, but one I can tell: in high school and beginning of college, I read at least a novel a month, usually one every week or two. Now I don't have time to do that, actually I read a non-technical book about once a year. Now, it could be age, stress, need to be in sync with technology, you name it, but I do feel that when I was reading books, my thoughts were much faster, freer, broader etc. I can't really tell how, but maybe the mind narrows to that specific area you work in and if you don't tackle the imagination with books, it gets lazier, in general. My point.