ENGL130

Instructor Linda Rogers

English 130

RR+R2

25 March 2014

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” 25 March 2014

One of the renowned authors named Nicholas Carr, who has authored many books around technology, has pulled out a very important piece titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In this article he gives an interesting story of Dave, Bowman, who, being controlled by supercomputer HAL, was nearly “sent to a deeper space death by the malfunctioning machine.” At this critical moment, Dave started disconnecting the memory circuits of the supercomputer, which felt robbed of his brain. The supercomputer wanted to regain its brain. Therefore, I agree that Google is making us stupid. Imagine a situation like the one given by Nicholas Carr, in which technology is used to control robots, and then the technology doing the controlling fails to do its work. Most times, technology can fail due to technical issues. If this failure arises, it means that the brain of the robot will be distorted. When Dave realized that the supercomputer was almost killing him, he started disassembling it. However, surprisingly, the supercomputer started feeling that its brain was being stolen. In this case, the author tries to bring a point that the use of Internet can make our minds become erratic. The author in this book argues, “I get fidgety, lose the thread, [and] begin looking for something else to do,” he says. People nowadays access a lot of information. They are also consuming a lot of information from the Internet. That is why when people open their computers; they are propelled to different sites. The author quotes that “…hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.” (Carr, 732). On other way, the communications technology effect on our life as general, especially how we communicate with others. Newly, the messages became a substitute for dial-up. It’s make us more and more lazy.

My argument therefore, is that the advancement in technology is making people do things that look stupid. Despite the fact that technology could bring a lot of good, in most cases, it makes people do things that are stupid. It is therefore, important for people to always think properly of what could be the likely consequences of exploring a given direction in technology.

Works Cited

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” Atlantic Monthly, web, July/August, 2008, http:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-makingus-stupid/6868/ (accessed March 25, 2014).