"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

The internet plays such a pivotal role in everyday life that it can sometimes be forgotten that negative ramifications do come about after extensive use. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr attacks this idea by pointing out the potential negatives, but also the potential and proven positives. This unique idea for a paper is complemented extremely well by the "back and forth" approach taken to see if the internet does more good than bad. Carr does not reveal his ultimate personal beliefs on the topic, but he merely sounds his "skepticism" for the effects of the large database, that is Google.
The potential negatives arose as heavy point of interest for the paper because negatives can often times appear nonexistent when using a database that obeys one's every command. There presents several instances in the paper where the potential negatives are sold well. The first is in the context of how searching for information has made us expect the information to be immediate and easy to find. The text from this section reads, "Once I was a Scuba Diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." This analogy effectively breaks down this idea allowing people to easily grasp the writer's idea. The idea also makes sense, because the information now that we want emerges much easier than it may have in the past. Similar to this idea, the writer proceeds later on to explain how reading long pieces of text has become increasingly hard. A fine pinnacle of this concept occurs in the paper when quoting Bruce Friedman, who blogs often about the medical aspect of internet use, who states, "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print." Friedman then carries on by proclaiming, "I can't read War and Peace anymore." This materializes as one example only, but Carr claims at the end of the paragraph that a multitude of his colleagues have faced similar challenges. While these two examples effectively translate the possible negative effects of extensive web use, Carr counters with positive conclusions that also come about as a result of internet use.
The positives that follow can presumably help in not only keeping you on the fence about the topic, but also ensuring that Carr himself is seen as someone who is on the fence. The most effective attention grabbing concept that stuck out surfaces when the writer states, " ... we may well be reading more than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice." This very conclusion must be beneficial to our minds in some way. Although it may be beneficial, Carr clarifies that the style in which we read now is different than in the past. This in turn generates a different style of thinking that we encounter. The style might not arise as the ideal standard of reading that experts agree, but it nevertheless disproves the fact that we do read more today than in the past. Another encouraging objective surfaces when the author writes about Google. The positive that is to come of this is the seemingly positive intentions that the company has. When quoting the company, Carr writes, " The company has declared its mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The intentions of this ideal seem the have a whole heart approach. Now granted, many variables could go wrong in this doing, but the initial idea appears one that can be acceptable to most.