Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Nicholas Carr's, Is Google Making Us Stupid,  was a very interesting passage that offered a lot of insight. He speaks of how the internet is ruining our minds, and the way they used to operate. He says how reading long passages are becoming more and more difficult. This is due to the ability to learn at lightening quick speeds. No longer are we rummaging through old books and papers. He is afraid that it will only grow worse over time, and that peoples' minds are going to become more and more artificial. He thinks we are slowly becoming more like computers, and computers are becoming more like humans.

Nicholas Carr's, Is Google Making Us Stupid, said a lot of things that are true that I think many people choose to ignore. Alternatively, perhaps they never thought deep enough to realize what he means on their own. Since the dawn of the machine, humans have grown more and more engrossed in its mystery. To many people, it almost is equivalent to Pandor's box. They do not understand how it works, or what really makes it function, but they except it, nonetheless. This is proof of what Carr is trying to say in his passage! Not only does the computer now weaken our abilities to read long passages, which, ironically I felt while reading his,but it literally does make us "Pancake people." Now that people have this vastness of information at their fingertip, they want more. They want bigger, faster, and better. I wonder how Carr felt once Google Instant made its first appearance on the web? Someone must have thought the power wasn't enough; now when you type something in the Google task bar, results begin to pop up before your even done writing! On top of that, when you are looking for what you typed on a web page, you now have the abilities to "jump to text." This is a new feature that allows what you're looking for among a paragraph, to be highlighted blue. Now, you do not have to read anything at all, except what you are actually looking for. If we are indeed losing the traditions our heritage, it does not seem as though many people care. Perhaps, it is time to create a new heritage? We live in a time where gizmos and gadjets give us abilities to learn, find your home, pay taxes, write reports, check the alignment of the stars, and even test if you are pregnant, all in the palm of your hand. Maybe it is time to let go of old traditions. Maybe it is time to embrace the age of the machine. Perhaps, we should truly become Pancake people, because it doesn't look like we really have a choice.