"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

I have often had the thought, especially when using actual books to do research, that Google is making us lazy as a society. Simply type in a phrase, question, or word you wish to search for, and within milliseconds you have billions of results at your fingertips. They are even organized so that the most relevant web pages are among the first results listed. This would be how Google is trying to "understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want." While this is not necessarily a bad thing--it is certainly a more efficient way to research than painstakingly combing through encyclopedias and nonfiction books looking for exactly the information you need, sometimes to no avail--it definitely does have its downfalls. For one thing, it is very easy to get distracted from what you are looking for, with the countless ads and hyperlinks on the sites you find. One minute you could be reading an article about the Korean War, and within three clicks you could be watching funny cat videos on YouTube.

There are more problems with the way our society reads and takes in information, however. As the article points out, "the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle." We are unable to sit down and read and understand a long piece of writing because of the way our brains have been trained by the internet. We are too used to efficiency, so we cannot function without it. For some, "thinking has taken on a 'staccato' quality," because this is the way that people read and take in information nowadays. This could easily leave us unable to think on a deep level and form connections when we read, which would be detrimental to us. The ability to contemplate ideas and really think is invaluable, and it is something most people unfortunately take for granted. Forming these connections between ideas is how we help our brain to grow and stay healthy, and without that ability, our brains may deteriorate. The article states, "the human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and bigger hard drive." When I read this, it made me think about how we are letting our brains fall into disrepair, and if we just started to go back to the old ways and really think on a deeper level, we may be able to "update" our cranial computers.

I think the problem that Google is causing lies in our attitudes. We have simply become used to having the world at our fingertips online, and for this reason we are losing the need to think deeply. Our society is one "seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output,"so that is what we have come to want. I wouldn't say this necessarily means we are "stupid," as Nicholas Carr suggests, it is just the way we are trained to think by our society. So, if anything, I think our society is making us stupid with its ideas and focuses, rather than Google. As the article states, "the ultimate search engine is something as smart as people--or smarter." This, to me, is an incredibly scary prospect. Is our society really so desperate that it wants a computer that is smarter than humans? I do, however, take umbrage to the wording of this. Can a computer ever really be "smarter" than a living, thinking human being? By what definition of "smart" is this measured? Sure, it may be able to pull up any piece of information when asked, or answer any question it is given, but can it really think? Does a computer have the ability to maintain a thought process and form a train of thought? The idea that "intelligence is the output of a mechanical process" is an outrageous one to me.

After thinking about this for a while, I realized that the basis of this entire article is incredibly ambiguous. Everyone defines smart in a different way, and therefore stupid is defined differently as well. So is there really any one way to measure the effects Google is having on our minds? Personally, I think it would be incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible, to do so.

So to answer the question "Is Google Making Us Stupid" may not be black-and-white. I think that, at the moment, we are letting it do just that. However, I think we are very able to reverse the effects Google is having on our brains. After all, if Google is making us stupid, we must have been smart at one time, right? We just need to reject the current ideas of what reading and research are, and transition back to the old ways of curling up with a good book for the night or scouring the stacks for information.