Google it.

Google is considered the greatest search engines ever to be bestowed upon the World Wide Web and all of its users. It can be used for almost anything related to media and information. Just type in one word, and users will subjected to over one million external web addresses, taking them from one web page to another. It truly is that simple. Many people will argue that Google is the best creation known to the Internet while others will argue that Google and the Internet together are causing negative effects on human intellectual capacities. And this is what they have to say.

I understand the complication Carr feels towards this problem about the Internet and Google changing the way humans go about thinking. He explains how “Once [he] was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now [he zips] along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” This is reflecting his thoughts about reading text coming from the Internet, rather than text coming from books. I seem to agree with what he is saying. The Internet is being used so frequent with the younger generation that books seem like a lost item. Even I see myself using the Internet to find information for my daily homework rather than using the book itself to solve the problem. I believe this is due to the convenience of “Google-ing” certain terms and coming up with the exact answer, instead of flipping through page after page, from index back to the passage, searching for one term on a page covered with thousands of words. And when I do need to use my textbook, I sometimes wish it had a “search” function that will lead me straight to what I am looking for.

There is also a quote by pathologist Bruce Friedman from the University of Michigan Medical School who admitted that “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. [He skims] it.” Unfortunately, I must admit that I felt the exact same way when I was reading this exact article as well. It’s not only with articles either. If I am working on a long, cumbersome homework assignment, I tend to get off task and become distracted by the easiest things, especially if that assignment is done on the computer. This will eventually lead me to get on the Internet, listen to music, watch television, or anything that will get me away from actually doing my work. Sadly, this is becoming more frequent say after day of my senior year. I think it’s a disease that all seniors become infected with, coined by the term “senioritis”.

In the end, is there really a way to show that people are actually becoming “dumber” using the Internet and search engines such as Google? This article does reveal many convincing arguments supporting this theory, but who can really tell? I believe that there needs to be more evidence and supporting data before calling this theory plausible. Even though this may be just another article floating in the waters of the massive sea called World Wide Web, it holds up many convincing arguments and viewpoints trying to bring down the communication giant called the Internet. I think they are on to something…

"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."
~ Karl Marx