"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Nicholas Carr's substantial article in The Atlantic ironically addresses the difficulty readers face in tackling and processing lengthy text either in print or online.  Actually, I switched over to Carr's article after a few pages of our other assigned reading for this week's class for that very same reason: I, too, have been struggling lately to focus my attention long enough to consume lengthy texts with any sort of intellectual depth.  My challenges may be slightly more complex than Carr's and those anecdotal examples he uses.  For instance, Carr mentions the convenience of the internet as a factor in changing the way he thinks over the last decade or so.  As a member of a generation thirty years younger than Carr, I have experienced the influence of the internet in nearly all of my academic research and writing--perhaps this influence has been even more potent on my impressionable intellect?  Certainly I have grown up among the generations who take the internet for granted.  And as a result I have encountered the challenge of vacillating between printed text and the pervasive resource of the web--the latter of which undoubtably caters to the short attention span of today's American youth (or perhaps it reflects its needs?).  Moreover, having recently spent a semester on a study abroad program that was much more like taking a semester off and living in a metropolitan city while reading some novels and going to the theatre--in addition to a semi-relaxing summer at home with very little responsibility--I have found this fall's return to academia painfully challenging.

While I value Carr's exploration of Nietzsche's experience switching over to a writing via typewriting--I share the notion that writing through type is a wholly different experience from handwriting text--and each method produces a distinct writing style--I criticize his inability to comment on what to do with these changes in ways of thinking.  After battling through that lengthy web article, the least Carr could do is offer readers some tips on extracting information from dense texts!


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/