"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Analysis

Nicolas Carr's article discusses a rather new question in the time of its publishing, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". In 2008, the time of the article, technology was just starting to become more simple and more accessible to the public. This is the same time Apple's triumph began when the iPhone and the desktop hit the market. Carr isn't too far from his comfort zone with this article as most of his other writings mainly focus on the American culture of technology and business.

Carr begins his article with a reference to HAL, the supercomputer from A Space Odyssey. A reference his audience would relate to, as they have probably seen the movie when they were younger. Assuming that, Carr's targeted audience probably his "peers" or close aged consumers. Carr highlights how he can relate to HAL malfunctioning and "feeling it," to him feeling his mind change from the internet. In this article, Carr unsuccessfully uses his experience with technology, personal research, and anecdotes to convince consumers of this time to not become so dependent on artificial intelligence as it will affect our actual intellect.

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The purpose of this article to convince consumers that the internet is driving us to distraction. Carr states his concerns and negative opinions of google and other technological advances affect the human brain at the beginning of a technological breakthrough.

With Carr being a famous writer, his credibility is shown through his accomplishments in his work. So, he doesn't use traditional approaches to appeal to readers using ethos.

Making his next point an anecdote about his friend having a similar opinion and experience with technology. He says his friend is a blog writer, but other than his friend being a lit major, Carr is in a way just telling his audience that his unpopular opinion isn't so unpopular. Another opinion he gives is from Friedrich Nietzsche. Carr points out that Nietzsche says how the typewriter had changed his style of writing. Even though its coming from a credible writer, it's a pretty dated story compared to the technology Carr is referring to.

To make up for his use of anecdotes to appeal to the readers, Carr uses logos showing readers studies that have been done on this topic. For example, Carr mentions the Scholars of University College London conducted a study proving that people no longer read in-depth but rather skim the text and most likely never reread. However, this doesn't mean just because the information is processed differently than it's not processed at all. Using more established sources, Carr's research hasn't served him wrong yet. He then quotes Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, who says when people read the text its translated into how we've trained our brain to. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience, says that the brain can change and reprogram faster than we think. With other studies to prove the internet's effect on the way humans think, Carr still can't prove if it's going to negatively impact the way we think.

Carr also shines a light on how the internet has influenced the media. The New York Times started putting article summaries on the first few pages to give readers an info snippet of an article they may or may not want to read. This to me is just giving consumers a list of options to choose from, but Carr's tone doesn't seem like he agrees with its convenience. Saying that the media had no choice but to conform to the internet style of language. Carr then speaks on how google can make us more productive with all the info we have in our grasp. But then counters that with the founders of Google saying that they want to make the ultimate search engine a "HAL-like machine". Referring to his concern of a man-made machine having our lives in "their hands". The founders thought of humans being better off artificial intelligence makes Carr uneasy about it all. Aiming to appeal to the audience's emotion using pathos, Carr, in the end, uses words like "drained", "pancake people", and "haunted". Intending to get the reader to imagine the internet caused a dystopian society.

In conclusion, if you weren't skeptical about technology's effects on the human mind before reading, you probably still aren't. Carr's use of anecdotes, research data, and rhetorical appeals in the article has probably convinced some of his present audience's attention, but not his future audiences. As it is more than a decade after this article was written, I believe Carr is right. Even at the beginning of this assignment, I didn't thoroughly read it until I had to do an essay on it. One thing he could have done less of was relying on his own authority to prove his credibility. It doesn't support an author's argument with an audience who is not familiar with their work. The internet may have changed our attention span and process of learning but Carr's article did not strengthen or weaken my own opinion.