Peer review response

Affan Chowdhury

William Matter

English 1301

02/10/2018

Effects of Computerization to Our Brains

Introduction

The twenty-first century is a period that has really felt the actual effects of automation in all fields of human life. And by impact, I mean both positive and negative. This is a time where students are opting to google a three-paragraph summary of scholarly books and avoid reading the entire 1200-page book, containing valuable information. While that might sound like a great option for students, for those who know what education really entails, that shouldn’t be something to celebrate for. And as a result, many academicians and concerned parties including NICHOLAS CARR have expressed their disapproval on the way the web is tempering with our mental functioning. The “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article was authored by CARR who takes a critical look at the entire idea of computerization. In the article, Carr tries to explain the effects that option of reading via the internet, brings to our brains and how it modifies our modes of reading. This article seeks to present a summary of Carr’s argument and my response to it.

Summary

The article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is simply talking about the consequences of computerization to humanity. To be precise, the author focuses mainly on the impact that replacing book-reading with online reading has brought to our minds. Carr begins the article with a real case scenario where he presents a machine begging a human being to stop hurting it, as it were a fellow human being (Bowman, par. 1).

Carr is a writer, and even though he acknowledges some of the benefits the internet has brought to his career, he condemns the way automation has changed his mind. He is worried that, reading on the internet has promoted a culture that puts immediacy and efficiency above everything. As a result, it has weakened our deep reading capacity. Carr goes on to cite various scholars who also argue that the internet shapes people’s thinking processes adversely, by interfering with their contemplation and concentration (McLuhan, par.4).

Carr uses various examples to pass his argument, including a blogger called Bruce Friedman who admit that today, he can barely read and understand long articles (Friedman, par.6). At one point Carr claims that the act of Google founders autotomizing every information might have some hidden agenda. He argues that the founders want to create online traffic so that they can profit from Google adverts, (Carr, par. 27). Carr concludes by saying human overdependence on the internet as a source of knowledge has continued to flatten human mind, thus turning our minds to artificial intelligence (Carr, par. 34)

Response

After keenly reading Carr’s argument in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article, this is my stand: I concur and disagree with him, partly. I agree with the part that online reading has negatively shaped the way we read, such that we just look for quick and efficient information instead of deep and detailed information. For example, nowadays it appears like an irrational thing to spend more than five hours reading a journal, when you can find and read a summary of the same, in just thirty minutes. Obviously, this type of reading can’t give scholars sufficient information to add to the academic field. Shockingly, students are not the only ones opting to take shortcuts in reading; professions do it as well. From the article, for instance, we get the story of a professional blogger Bruce Friedman, who confesses that he too, despite his career requiring in-depth information, doesn’t see the essence of reading lengthy articles. He simply skims through them, (Friedman, par. 5).

However, I disagree with Carr’s idea of challenging Google’s act of storing information on people’s behalf. According to Carr, Google is trying to make our mind shallow by reasoning on our behalf, (Foreman, par. 33). While Carr sees things that way, the reality is that we can’t store every information in our heads. And here is where Google comes in to help us to not just get information but to get it quickly and easily. For example, it makes no sense to stress yourself internalizing your university’s fees bank account number, when you can simply google it from your university website. In fact, we should be thanking Google founders because their mission is to create a software that knows exactly what we are looking for. Just as Google co-founder puts it, our lives would be better off, if we had an artificial brain attached to our minds (Page, par. 26)

Conclusion

To conclude, I would say that the internet has both positive and negative effects to humanity and it is upon us to make it more of a positive thing than a negative one. For example, with the use of Google, you can easily search information about “first aid for somebody bitten by a snake,” and be able to save the victim. Of course, that information wouldn’t be easy to get even if you had a book with relevant information. At the same time, skimming online journals wouldn’t be something good especially for a physician who has to get in-depth information about a particular disease to administer treatment.

Work cited

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