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?

[DSarna]

I have posted a piece about this article on my GoogleGazer blog. See http://googlegazer.com/2008/06/11/its-not-google-thats-making-us-stupid-its-the-economy-stupid/

[wroush]

Nick Carr should be congratulated for stirring up conversation about an important topic. But I tend to agree with his own acknowledgement that "Maybe I'm just a worrywart." Over at Xconomy, I've published a reply to The Atlantic piece:

http://www.xconomy.com/2008/06/13/you-say-staccato-i-say-sfumato-a-reply-to-nicholas-carr/3/

[nickclark567]

If only people ould get this worked up about things that actually matter-like saving your soul.

[Muhammad I.]

The internet doesn't make you stupid, get over it already, you fake intellectuals.

[geneven]

I don't know about making US stoopid, but Google clearly isn't raising the intelligence of the author, who is clearly engaged in automatic writing, picking a topic that everyone knows about and speculating at a skin-deep level. Personally, I am currently reading Gone with the Wind and rereading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (on my Nokia N800, btw), so I guess my ability to read long books is unimpaired. In any period of history one might find reasons to worry about fragmented consciousness -- isn't that one of the themes of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, written in 1922?

[Pirate Balthier]

You know what would be better than blaming other stuff (and inanimate stuff to make things worse) for our "stupidity" and lack of book reading ?

Blaming ourselves for not doing that actually...

[blit33]

First of all, I disagree with how "medium" is used in this article. Mediums exist only because data and information needs to be disseminated. The Net is a medium data/information is disseminated through. The Net does not absorb any other medium. Data/information is still being disseminated through TV, radio, etc. When data/information is disseminated through the Net, it is that simple. Surely data/information on the Net is not organized with authority work and classification as traditional libraries are. There are no information professionals trained with masters degrees (phd's) aiding people through resources found by Google. The Net is a disorganized, sloppy, and misleading information environment. If this is what adults want, then there is nothing wrong with that. Relative to genius creations like Dewey's classifications, LOC's contributions, and the profession of librarianship with its substantial impact on society, I would say Google surely has the possibility of making people really stupid if it is looked at as a way to learn. People need to understand the Net is a medium in itself, just like books. There are a million angles to debates like this. The bottom line is that information can be wrong, changed, edited, etc, in the Net environment. The very bottom line is that without teachers, any medium may assist people in becoming stupid. Reading books can make people stupid. In the end, embrace technology and teachers/instructors should view the Net as any other medium. Mediums are mediums, nothing more or less, not bad or good.

[blit33]

And....information can make people stupid. It is the root of everything we make decisions on, and people kill, love, and hate based on it. Information shapes what we believe. What we believe shapes how we live.

[ziba1]

Progress and technology has both good and bad with it. It is not because progress and technology is bad, but it is because as human beings we tend to get lazy when there is a shortcut. Let?s look at many side effects that we suffer from due to our progress:

Obesity:
After the industrial revolution and development of the combustion engine, the human-being stopped being as physically active as it used to be. The more the machines do the jobs we used to do, the less we move. We used to walk because we had to get from point A to point B, now we drive. We used to have to cut wood for the fire place, now we buy cut wood that is cut by heavy machines, so on and so forth. So less physical activity has lead to us gaining weight.

We even used to go for a stroll because we were bored of sitting in the house, now if we want a change of scenery, we turn on the big screen TV.

We used to have to cook from scratch and that took lots of work, now we eat fast food. Pull up to the window in the car, or put the frozen food in the microwave and sit in front of the TV and eat mindlessly and gain weight.

Penmanship:
We used to write everything with pen a paper. Bad penmanship showed that you were not educated and had a lower status in the society. These days, there are presidents and CEO's who are highly educated, highly paid, and cannot write to save their life. They use the computer for everything and pushing buttons is the only skill they need to write. I even know executive assistants who have horrid penmanship. The type faster than the wind, but ask them to write something down, and you will be astonished.

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD):
Why are we drugging our children when we as a society have created the ADD?? From the day that the child takes its first step, the parents keep that child as busy as a bee. We used to be kids and play and day dream all day. We used to write in our diary, stare in the distance, chase butterflies, and spend hours in the backyard watching ants go about their business. Childhood was calm and quiet. These days some kids are busier than some executives. They have jobs, chores, baseball, GYM class, Music class, and they have school. They are being stretched to the limit and the parents are frazzled from running them around, but they still do it!! And let?s not mention the TV and the computer and the video games. ADD is just a side effect of what we put our kids through. Stop it and they will calm down and pay attention.

Now we are wondering if Google is making us stupid! No, google is just another technology that we can use. How we use things and how we fit them in our life is our problem. Overdoing anything is not good. It is like an alcoholic blaming alcohol for his or her condition.

Maybe I will write a book about this one day :)

[kujakupoet]

Or maybe it's the other way around. I used to be an avid reader (still am) and reading and writing came easily to me. I never understood what 'writer's block' is because I never had it -- until I developed a neurological disorder and my ability to process language deteriorated badly. Along with medication, I started writing poetry to retrain my brain. It worked. I also started reading online because I simply couldn't sustain the attention necessary to read even a single magazine page. Reading online let me read what I wanted when I wanted. It let me adjust the type size to be convenient and comfortable for me. I turned off the animations and pop ups to get rid of distractions. (Death to designers of websites whose flashing lights can't be turned off, and slow torture to those that foist music on you, overriding your personal choice of anything from the Tall Ships Suite to Southern Culture on the Skids). I read and chat online, but I choose things that interest me -- and dumbed down conversation of the 'whut R U doin' type isn't what interests me. I'm sure that if that is the height of your conversational ambition, your reading ability will probably suffer, but the real problems is a lack of motivation is the problem. Being a slacker is cool, but it makes you stupid. The Internet makes available to me a vast wealth of information -- including marvelous old books -- that I could never afford to buy myself. (How about a 1780 edition of Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine? Thank you, Australian government for making it available free and searchable online!) Even if I could afford to buy all the books I wanted, where would I put them? I live in a two bedroom apartment where the volume books has already eliminated the sofa. To sum up, Google doesn't make you stupid -- you make yourself stupid by failing to apply the same rigor to the Internet that you claim to apply to the printed word.