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  • Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic(July/August 2008)

    What the Internet is doing to our brains Is Google Making Us Stupid? From the page: Anecdotes alone don't prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently... more

    Reviewed by aliasinkhorn Jun 17 2008, 11:43pm ( 109 reviews ) • theatlantic.com

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  • Rated by DarklingPlain on Oct 05, 4:42pm

    The idea has probably occurred to virtually everyone on SU: yeah, I'm spending an awful lot of time in front of the computer... didn't I used to, like, go outside, or read things that weren't on a backlit screen? But Nicholas Carr does a really superb job of nailing down the experience of the bona internet information junkie. It's one of those articles that is so satisfying because finally, someone has articulated something you've been tossing around in the back of your head for a long time.... We finally really do live in a McLuhan universe.

  • Reviewed by Torchiest on Jul 23, 8:36pm

    tl;dr

  • Rated by harrystottle on Jul 02, 4:49pm

    I find this depressing. It certainly isn't my experience. Since Amazon came on line, my book reading has increased at least five fold. I've just bought The Life and Death of Democracy ffuxsake and that's well over a thousand pages, as was Tragedy and Hope for another example (and that link gets you the whole thousand and ninety pages in a pdf entirely cost free - how the hell are you going to do that without the web??) Not to mention hundreds of other moderately weighty tomes. None of which I would have purchased and read, had it not been for learning about them here on the intaweb and finding people here, who had a good or bad word to say about the book which prompted me to buy it. I have rarely been disappointed. Then there are pure online masterpieces, like Bob Altemeyor's "The Authoritarians", in which direction I frequently try to nudge my readers. I am also keenly conscious of how much better informed I am than I was. And how that now applies to a very large number of other people. Yes, there are also a hell of a lot of misinformed rather than better informed citizens, but that results from a mix of conscious choice and conditioning. Simply by being on the web, however, as well as exposing themselves to rubbish, they expose themselves to occasional quality. And it changes some of them forever. It might be a low percentage who are transformed this way but the global effect is thousands of times greater in absolute volume than the numbers who reached their enlightenment through the printed word. At the same time, it is equally evident that the majority of web plankton have a very short attention span. I've logged over 200,000 readers of "Talking To God" and read hundreds of references to it being too long to hold their attention. (It's about 15 pages on A4, 17 American Letter size pages) Nevertheless I've also read a healthy number of comments about how, though lengthy by internet standards, it was worth ploughing on. My stats suggest that about 12% of my initial readers have the stamina to cope with a moderately lengthy piece (they go on to read "Resurrection" which links from the foot of the article) and I'm actually quite pleased with that.The question is, can 12% (about 1 in 8) form a critical mass?

  • Rated by soccerkid on Jun 21, 8:22am

    Google doesn't make me seem stupider, but Google and Internet in general seems to make me read in a different way than the way I grew up with.

  • Rated by vineetcoolguy on Jun 20, 12:16am

    Great article, I'm one of the fastest readers I know (That's including all my medical friends) and I do think internet overuse would effect my reading habits... Thankfully (perhaps) my time spent online is limited.

  • Rated by jwb1979 on Jun 20, 12:16am

    Google's headquarters, in Mountain View, California--the Googleplex--is the Internet's high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism.Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is "a company that's founded around the science of measurement," and it is striving to "systematize everything" it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind. Thanks adarsh-seeker

  • Rated by adarsh-seeker on Jun 19, 11:53pm

    They explained how I got there.. :)

  • Rated by Vonilan on May 27, 8:58pm

    As an avid Internet-user, my initial response to the title of this piece was naturally skeptical, even incredulous. As I read through the article, though, the simple truth of the facts presented struck me - I could relate. I find it undeniable that the advent of the information age has changed the way I think, and I'm sure plenty of others feel the same way. The real question that needs to be answered is this: Is that a bad thing? Is simply skimming text for information without being deeply engaged in it undesirable? I think it is. But what can be done about it? Withdrawing from Internet usage and spending more time in deep thought with a few good books seems like the only viable solution.

  • Reviewed by Silvermoonstar3 on May 05 2009, 11:04am

    I was linked to this page from a page that had proof (studies) that showed that google DOES change how our brains work; but in a good way. They showed what parts of the brain are used in certain activities for people who are good with computers and for people who aren't. Much more was lit up in those who use it (and moreso, google) than those who were not regular users of computers (and google). I have used computers since before I can even remember, and I have no problem reading a book. I'm better at concentrating on books than almost anything else.