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Logan McLindsay

Professor Percival

Where is the Internet Taking Us?

In the opinion of Nicholas Carr in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (424), when the

printing press was invented it was groundbreaking. Many people before the printing press did little

to no reading or couldn’t read at all. After it was invented it revolutionized the way people were

educated. It made the ease of access to clear text more accessible, and meant that people were able

to self-educate much easier. As time went on and new technologies came to the mainstream, such as

the internet, it did the exact opposite of clearing and refining text. It added more distractions rather

than taking them away. The internet is a multimedia platform that allows the ease of access to many

different sources, and databases. This ultimately reduces our attention span due to the amount of

distractions. On the other hand, Clive Thompson in his article “Smarter Than You Think: How

Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” (441) new technologies are advancing the way we

think. Humans and Computers working together can create amazing things. This is because each are

very good at what they do, humans being able to see the big picture, and made decisions based on

morals, and computers that can solve mathematical problems along with compiling data.

Communication has increased dramatically due to the instant transfer of info across the world.

Now obviously Carr and Thompson have conflicting views on whether or not new

technologies are changing the way we think for the better. I think they would both agree that there is

no doubt it is changing our minds. In my opinion the internet can be used as a diverse and creative

tool to instantly communicate, and add knowledge to its vast database, but like anything you can use

it for the opposite reasons. In the early days of the internet it was solely used to communicate over

long distances quickly. It then grew into a platform for academic debates and media, now it is used
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for almost everything. Entertainment is one of the largest parts of the internet now, and many

people use it almost only for that reason. This is where Carr’s opinion weighs in. The internet has so

many access points and is so easy to switch from content to content that it gets extremely

distracting. When Carr refers to Psychologist Maryanne Wolf in his article (428), talking about the

kind of deep reading we used to do verses the efficiency reading that takes place on the internet, he

would be correct. Only that is a choice form the reader on how they use the information. The

information learned and written on the internet can be used to further education and

communication in a productive way. In a world that is getting faster and faster we are not able

remember everything. Humans can only remember so much, and sometimes the memories can

become warped. This is were the internet jumps in to play. With the internet we can store almost

and unlimited amount of memories. This encourages more and more writing, but even if the quality

of the content isn’t as “deep” as it was in the past it is able to be improved upon constantly. The

platform can be used by medical professionals to assist in looking up patents records or

communicating immediately the status of a patent.

Having such a large platform in the world will be changing the way we think and the world

works. But how we use it is up to us, it could be used to distract and entertain, or it can be used to

further education, and make communication even faster.

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Works Cited

Carr Nicholas “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” They Say I Say with readings 4th ed., edited by Gerald
Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., pp. 424-440.