Blog Post #4 - Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr

For this blog post, I have chosen to discuss an article I read in my first year at Toronto Metropolitan University while studying philosophy. The article was published in the year 2008 and written by Nicholas Carr titled ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ for The Atlantic. He begins by introducing the end scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Dave Bowman is disconnecting the memory circuits that control supercomputer HAL’s artificial brain while HAL is begging Bowman to stop because he can “feel his mind going.” Carr uses this example as an analogy, for how he has also felt. As if someone has been remapping the neural circuitry and reprogramming the memory in his brain, he states not being able to think the way he used to. 

Carr’s main argument is that the internet has damaging effects on people’s abilities and attention spans. Whether it be reading books, e-mails, blog posts, or jumping from link to link, the internet has forever made its way into our lives. It has become a universal medium with information flowing through our eyes and ears and into our minds, people have the advantage of immediate access to incredible amounts of information. Carr then brings forward the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, he mentions how McLuhan pointed out that media are not just passive channels of information, but the supply of thought, and that they shape the process of thought. Then once again, what Carr seems to argue is that the internet restricts our capacity for concentration and contemplation. He believes that our mind now expects to take in information the way the internet distributes it. What happened is that the way people think has changed, they seek convenience, and they now “power browse” and skim through articles to avoid reading. Efficiency and immediacy seem to weaken people’s ability to interpret text, the capacity for deep reading, and making mental connections when we read. 

Carr notes that we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell calls “intellectual technologies,” which he defines as the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities which we then inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. Similar to how McLuhan sought and understood technologies as an extension of the human body and senses. Carr provided an example of the mechanical clock, which came into use in the 14th century. He described how the clock disassociated time from human events and helped create measurable sequences, he claimed that the clock helped bring the scientific mind and the scientific man. But, it took away direct experiences, “we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.” The process of adaptation is reflected even in the metaphors we use, Carr mentioned how when the mechanical clock arrived, people began referring to their brains operating like clockwork. Nowadays, we come to think of our brains operating like computers. 

Nicholas Carr goes on to mention the development of writing using Plato’s Phaedrus, and the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press. What other topics we discussed in class do you think can be used to support Carr’s argument?

Where to find the article:

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