Is It Really Google’s Fault We’re Stupid?

While reading through Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, the issues of trying to read through text is definitely relateable. However, the reason and explanation for why it happens could use some work. Similar to Carr, I enjoyed reading at a young age. During the early ages of elementary and middle school, it was not difficult to pick up a book and read every letter of every page to delve into the fictional worlds painted by authors. But as time went on and as I grew up, I found myself struggling to convince myself to read. And as Carr mentioned, “my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” Often times when I am handed something during classes, I would struggle to read through 2 paragraphs, losing focus on what the text is talking about and stop reading. Other times as I read, I would still be reading and taking in the words, but my mind doesn’t connect them together to form a statement. It was pretty much just me regurgitating words from the paper and by the time I realize I understood none of the material I had just read, I had already went through a good portion of the text and would have to go back and re-read it. Carr claims the problem of him being unable to focus on this information stems from the Internet and how his habits changed after his usage of the Internet – I would have to disagree. The degradation of being able to focus on something – at least for me, is because we’re worn out. Doing something for many times can sometimes be exhausting and tire you out and eventually, you lose interest in it. For example, even if pizza is great and you believe it’s the best food in the world, having it for dinner everyday can be detrimental to your initial opinion of it. At some point, you will lose complete interest in it as you’re tired of eating it again. This would also apply for Carr’s situation in trying to focus on reading texts. After reading through pages and chapters and volumes of texts, eventually you get tired of it as the words become nothing but ink on paper or pixels on a screen. At that point, you’re reading for the sake of reading and not to learn and connect the information you gain to each other and other ideas. Tom Owad also shares an article of data mining in which he wrote a simple shell script to scrape data from Amazon Wishlists. The scripts collected about 260,000 wishlists that consumed just over 5 GB of data. Programming and shell scripting aside, the existence of Amazon Wishlists could prove that it’s true that we are unable to retain information nowadays. Before the prevalence of the Internet and internet services, information was simply stored via paper and pen that would be stacked upon other paper, inside folders, inside cabinets. With the help of the Internet and services like Amazon Wishlists, people have instant and convenient access to the things they need. All they have to do is pull out their phone, tap a few buttons and they list of items are presented to them in their hands.

Whether you begin on the initial day otovix mercado libre of your period, the first Sunday after, or button from a various form of contraception, adhering to the suggested standards as well as utilizing additional contraception, if necessary, will certainly help give trustworthy defense versus unexpected maternities.

Tony Lu