In his article, Carr’s main argument is that Google is changing the way we think. He believes that we have become so used to the internet that we rely on it to accomplish our day to day activities. In this way, our brains get rewired to behave like the internet. He claims that this has made it difficult for people, including him, to develop their physical abilities and instead major in developing their mental abilities only. Carr uses very convincing facts to push his point through.
He states that how we read, the mode of reading influences our thought process. With the internet having been turned into a universal medium through which information flows, he believes that it chips our ability to concentrate and contemplate on information that is available in printed form. This, he claims, is possible because there are lots of information on the internet which people skim through in the process of trying to absorb it. They move from one site to another with no intention of deeply reading what they come across. This makes them, as he says, decoders of information. He provides various examples to nail his claim. For instance, he says that the Chinese have a different reading mental circuitry from those who use alphabets because they use ideograms. He also points out how the typewriter changed the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche. Since the human brain has the ability to adjust to its surrounding despite age, Carr believes that everyone is vulnerable. He fears that the internet is shaping our brain into working like a machine.
- Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google making us stupid?” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107.2 (2008): 89-94.