Google isn't Responsible for Our Stupidity

When I first read the title of this essay, I could automatically predict the subject matter. It is clear that Nicholas Carr believes that we as a society rely entirely too much on the internet for our information, and that it is detrimental to our intelligence to do so. His argument is well formed, and it made me think about effects the internet has on people that I never really thought of before.

Search engines like Google have made it easy to find information on any topic we want within a few typed words and a couple of clicks. Carr argues that as we use the search engines and quickly skim the websites and articles for a few valuable or interesting sentences, we are on our way to losing our ability to absorb and think in depth about the things we read, especially longer works. He quotes a blogger named Bruce Friedman: “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print…I can’t read War and Peace anymore.”

Well, I think the average person would have a difficult time absorbing War and Peace, not because they can’t or because Google is making them stupid, but because it isn’t interesting enough. I myself have never tried, but anyone who has seen Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! will remember the difficulties he had with it, not making it past the first five pages after trying for his entire winter break.

There’s another thing about skimming the things you read. It is a research technique that is often used to get through vast amounts of material in a short time. You highlight passages you think might be useful and ignore the rest. If you need to, you go back later and read more in depth to catch the things you miss. I don’t think that this practice makes you lose your thinking ability. I think it may be that some people become too lazy to read anything in depth.

That’s the key right there: laziness. The internet is our source for information, communication, news, and pretty much anything else you can think of in these times. Carr says that the internet is actually making us lose our ability to read and think in depth, as in we can’t even if we tried. I don’t entirely agree with this. I think that everyone still has the ability to do those things but become too lazy to do so. So, in my opinion Google isn’t making us stupid. It’s our lack of motivation.