Summary. “Is Google making us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr

Nicolas Carr thinks that the Internet changes, biologically and culturally, our way of

reading and thinking, turning us into superficial skimmers in the realm of information.

Research shows that people get used to a constant, fast-paced and superficial flow of

tiny bits of information, being easily distracted and rarely reading any piece of article or

book from cover to cover.

This shift translates into changes of our way of thinking. Firstly, research in

neuroscience suggests that the way we read and write has an influence on our neuronal

circuitry, our brain’s plasticity being sufficient even for a late reprogramming. Secondly,

it has long been known that our conception of the world and the metaphors we use to

describe our experience in it are largely provided by our newest technologies.

Internet’s influence is, thus, able to turn our thinking into a kind of algorithm, as its

realm is governed by taylorism's long for efficiency and time saving, which makes deep

reading and contemplation obsolete.

Becoming simple decoders of information, we cannot develop lasting and personal

connections between the absorbed bits of information. We lose our ability to assimilate

the information into our own, personal and complex web of associations that used to be

the sign of cultural sophistication and the necessary condition for deep thinking.

Essay. In the light of the argument Carr develops, do you feel optimistic or

pessimistic about current changes in ICTs and their influence on our ways of

thinking and working?

The internet has gained, despite its young age, a prominent role in our everyday life.

Its use as a way of communication and diffusion of information being ubiquitous, it is

reasonable to ask ourselves what is the message of this new medium and what is its

influence on our way of thinking. The problem raised by Carr’s article and subsequent book

is far from being trivial, but it is not a new one. It seems to me that the Internet provides an

excuse for our indulging, paraphrasing Steven Pinker, the worse angels of our nature. The

change is, then, in our thinking habits rather than in our thinking per se.

It is very hard to tell whether the Internet changes our thinking in a strict, biological

sense, because we know very little about the way in which neural activity triggers mental

activity and computation. Even the research cited by Carr is not uncontroversial among

neuroscientists (it suffices to cite, in this regard, Steven Pinker’s critique). What we do know

is mostly limited to a basic understanding of lower level cognitive processes, which are

deeply wired in our brains, having been the result of a long process of natural selection of

random variations. The reprogramming allowed by our brain’s plasticity is, then, marginal

and not fundamental, being a sign of our capacity to adapt to our environment.

In a looser sense, however, the Internet certainly has an influence on our thinking

habits, as it indulges our searching for a constant flow of tiny bits of information and keeps

us under the pressure of distraction.

The question is, however, if those two problems appeared with the Internet. We could

argue that it merely offers a lot more possibilities for our innate tendency to procrastinate

and avoid hard intellectual work. Even the information provided on the Internet is not

necessarily superficial and fast-paced, for the curious mind can easily find a lot of high

quality content. Rather, the problem seems to be that those who create the content

accepted, for the first time in history, to comply to the expectations of average Joe, who, it is

supposed, prefers his information chewed and carefully cut in tiny bits. In order to maintain

their average consumer’s attention (and to make him click as many hyperlinks and ads as

possible), content creators satisfy these needs, creating a dangerous and self-reinforcing

loop of supply and demand. Through a democratization of content creating and sharing,

which is in itself a good thing, the type of writing most people seemed to long for

proliferated, but it would be safe to say that those who content themselves with digested and

superficial information wouldn’t have had very solid reading habits without the Internet

providing a way to develop a disproportionate sense of intellectual self-confidence and

entitlement without the necessary intellectual foundations.

Of course, part of the problem comes from the unprecedented proliferation of

available content and prospective sources of distraction. Too much information seems

essential, so that we are forced (or seem to be) to divide our attention between multiple

tasks, something we are, research suggests, tremendously bad at. In other words, we are

spread too thin to focus on any heavy intellectual task when the Smartphone is close by.

The Internet doesn’t seem to influence our thinking at a biological level and doesn’t

create new problems at the cultural one, but it does empower our old nemesis,

procrastination, and indulge our bad habits. This doesn’t mean, however, that the future is

grim, for the Internet is a wonderful medium for knowledge democratization. It suffices to

teach ourselves to avoid its dangerous bends. This is a wager I am willing to take.