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Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Nicholas Carr's blockbuster essay on how the Internet is changing the way we think, now available in a Kindle edition. Originally published in The Atlantic magazine in 2008, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" set off a worldwide debate about the cognitive and cultural consequences of our infatuation with computers and online media. The essay served as the original inspiration for Carr's Pulitzer Prize-nominated book "The What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." This edition of the essay includes an author's note on his sources.
Unknown Binding
First published July 1, 2008
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About the author
Nicholas Carr
21books1,045followersNicholas Carr is the bestselling author of several books on how technology shapes our lives and thoughts, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows and the new Superbloom. His other books include The Glass Cage, Utopia Is Creepy, The Big Switch, and Does IT Matter? Former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, Nick writes for The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications. He lives in Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 26, 2022
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇A Must-Read⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
This essay is mostly for those readers who remember the days before Google, but as someone who hasn't lived many years without Google, this was still surprisingly relatable. Does anyone else feel more impatient when reading online compared to reading offline? Is anyone else frequently tempted to open a laptop or phone? Does anyone else find it difficult to close a device even though you know you should?
Carr argues that the brain is able to reprogram itself, with "nerve cells routinely break[ing] old connections and form[ing] new ones". He explains how the internet is a place of distraction, from the hundreds of posts on your social media pages to the advertisements, banners, and sidebars spaced on nearly every webpage, and even to the slew of tabs that most people have open on their devices. "The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought," Carr says. "It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction." After all, the more links we click, the more information Google and other sites gains, and this information makes them money.
««Recommended for...»»
☐ Everyone
This essay is mostly for those readers who remember the days before Google, but as someone who hasn't lived many years without Google, this was still surprisingly relatable. Does anyone else feel more impatient when reading online compared to reading offline? Is anyone else frequently tempted to open a laptop or phone? Does anyone else find it difficult to close a device even though you know you should?
Carr argues that the brain is able to reprogram itself, with "nerve cells routinely break[ing] old connections and form[ing] new ones". He explains how the internet is a place of distraction, from the hundreds of posts on your social media pages to the advertisements, banners, and sidebars spaced on nearly every webpage, and even to the slew of tabs that most people have open on their devices. "The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought," Carr says. "It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction." After all, the more links we click, the more information Google and other sites gains, and this information makes them money.
««Recommended for...»»
☐ Everyone
June 14, 2018
The article is an abstract of the writer's famous book "The Shallows" :
The perfect recall of silicon memory, can be an enormous boon to thinking
But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski
We are not only what we read, we are how we read
The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves
We risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button
As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence
The perfect recall of silicon memory, can be an enormous boon to thinking
But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski
We are not only what we read, we are how we read
The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves
We risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button
As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence
August 26, 2022
lmfao i take back telling mr puma to choke abt this. this was acc rlly good/informative and now im scared im becoming dumb 😍✨
December 14, 2022
The general argument and conclusions presented are sound, but his manner of presentation leaves a bad taste. Ending your essay with a statement like 'as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence' is just... cringe. He further says that 'HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film... In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine', which is a really, really big reach. 2001 is about the ascendance of humanity, underscored by Dave's victory over the superintelligent machine HAL. The attempt to end on a poignant thought falls horribly flat, not only for missing the point of the movie but because of its inappropriate melodrama.
September 11, 2024
This is an essay. Not a book. For someone authoring this way way back in 2008, to prophesize that "Google is Making Us Stupid" is extremely bold, to think that the author developed this hunch a decade and half before everyone were beginning to contemplate the ubiquity of internet leading our lives impresses me. Leading me to think, which other kind of internet imposed hysteria the author has developed in advance. I would be curious to hear what the author has to say for the current dictum of chatgpt and large language models capturing our lives.
I sympathize with the author's opening argument that he struggles reading long pieces of prose without his mind dilly-dallying around. Almost as if, I cannot impress upon a reading piece if it weren't coming from a screen. I find it amusing each time when I call myself a voracious reader, but most of the reading comes from ebooks and pdfs. Which of course is a useful invention coming from the internet. And for someone in a remote tier-3 village with tiny bandwidth for the internet, godsend even.
The decade between 2005 and 2015, were an interesting decade. Especially at a time and place when Google and the internet was slowly and gradually penetrating our social interactions, Nicholas Carr boldly declared his scepticism of the internet making us more stupid.
But alas, I am afraid he falls short of the benefits the internet brings with itself. For, he certainly wouldn't be complaining the reach the internet would have brought his work.
I sympathize with the author's opening argument that he struggles reading long pieces of prose without his mind dilly-dallying around. Almost as if, I cannot impress upon a reading piece if it weren't coming from a screen. I find it amusing each time when I call myself a voracious reader, but most of the reading comes from ebooks and pdfs. Which of course is a useful invention coming from the internet. And for someone in a remote tier-3 village with tiny bandwidth for the internet, godsend even.
The decade between 2005 and 2015, were an interesting decade. Especially at a time and place when Google and the internet was slowly and gradually penetrating our social interactions, Nicholas Carr boldly declared his scepticism of the internet making us more stupid.
But alas, I am afraid he falls short of the benefits the internet brings with itself. For, he certainly wouldn't be complaining the reach the internet would have brought his work.
December 30, 2024
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr argues that the internet, particularly tools like Google, is reshaping the way we think. Carr suggests that constant access to information and quick answers is making it harder for people to focus, deeply process information, or think critically. He worries that our brains are adapting to skim rather than engage in deep, reflective thought, potentially eroding our ability to read lengthy texts or analyze complex ideas. The shift in how we consume and process information may lead to a shallower form of intelligence, prioritizing speed and efficiency over depth and comprehension.
bite sized content is shite :(
bite sized content is shite :(
April 29, 2024
This essay was my sole motivation for reverting back to reading physical copies of books instead of digital. My opinions on the essay may be changed if I were to read this again, it has been an awfully long time since I've come across it, but I just remember thinking that this summed up a big chunk of problems the internet brings intellectually and it is important to talk about these things critically and with an open mind.
November 7, 2021
i can see what he means but no.
October 15, 2015
I had to read it for English 1301. I disagree with Carr because if you are very passionate about a topic you would not just skim through it. For example, I love fanfictions, and most f the fanfictions are long af. Since I love fanfictions, I read for fun and not as a chore. But if I had to read a two-page essay for school, I get very mad and skim through. Carr brought up points and proofs, and I enjoyed reading the essay. I would give it 3.5/ 5.
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