"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr discusses exactly what the title would imply: is Google making its users stupid or is it something else? In short, Carr's answer is yes, Google is making its users stupid. Carr argues that not just Google, but all of the Internet, is making people less and less capable of deeply engaging with print articles or books of any substantial length because a modern, computer reader cannot focus on the text long enough to truly engage with it. This is because the modern reader is used to the fast-paced, ever-changing, pop-up-containing internet medium rather than a simple printed text or article. There are no adds popping up in a book. There are no hyperlinks to click. A book doesn't hold a modern reader's attention anymore because of the internet (and therefore Google). However, the Internet goes beyond taking over books and print articles. Carr says, "The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV." The Internet takes over other all other mediums too. Google is the perfect facilitator for this because without a good search engine, finding a desired article on the vast Internet would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Carr brings up that one of the creators of Google, Page, said that, "For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence," which is terrifying to Carr. Carr fears the idea that people would be better off relying on artificial intelligence rather than their own brains, which is exactly what he believes Google, and the Internet as a whole, is moving people toward while dragging all-too-willing people away from books and articles and deep reading and thought.
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" connects, or contrasts, most readily with "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" by James Bowman, written in direct response to Carr's work, and "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky. James Bowman argues the exact opposite of Carr. He claims that the culture was already degrading along with education (because of teachers trying to make it fun) before. This caused a rise in the use of Google. Bowman claims that children are no longer expected to read and truly understand things because culture is currently failing to be transmitted from the previous generation to the next in favor of "fun" learning. Children learning things on a surface level temporarily is the result and therefore, culture isn't transmitted to the new generation that doesn't really value things of the past such as literature. Marc Prensky also throws his two cents into the conversation about the Internet's affect on the youth of today. Prensky differs slightly from Carr and Bowman with his argument while still discussing a similar topic. Prensky argues that there is a disconnect between today's students (natives) and today's teachers (immigrants) and this disconnect causes information not to be facilitated from teacher to student in a way the student fully comprehends. This is because the Internet users from the modern generation, like Carr and Bowman say, are distinctly different from the generations before them in a negative way.
While the Internet contains many advertisements when you read articles or books online, an e-reader does not. Would an e-reader be considered as harmful as the Internet to people's ability to comprehend complex articles or books?
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