Hallie Qiu, Response to N.Carr Reading

Hallie Qiu (26459187)
Response to Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

"That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world it is out own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence" (Carr, 66).

Selected Question: "Is the internet making us stupid?"

Carr claims that the internet "flattens" our intelligence. In some ways, I can see exactly why he would come to believe this -- however, on the other hand it doesn't justify all of the internet's purposes. Understanding his stance on the argument claiming that the internet makes you stupid has some truth. In some ways, people do not use the internet in order to broaden their knowledge, but for recreational purposes. Although we all learn something new everyday, Carr's stance is seemingly correct. People can use the internet for a variety things, and one of them is entertainment. People visit sites such as Reddit, Netflix, Youtube and even Tumblr. More likely than not, people go on site like these on the internet for entertainment and not necessarily for educational reasons. There are even people who take ideas from these sites and turn them into realities. This is where Carr's claim that "Google does make you stupid"--come to life. There are some people that are ridiculous enough to attempt certain stunts that they definitely shouldn't because it is dangerous. A modern day example of this is - planking. It was spread through the internet and became a phenomenon. Although planking is something as stupid as laying front, straight, flat on a surface, it costed someone's life. I guess you could say that everyone has the right to do whatever they want, but at the price of a human life-I think that the internet made him "stupid". If it hadn't been a phenomenon spread through the Net, there would be one more person in the world.

Nonetheless, one can argue that Carr's claim isn't true because how can something as intangible as the Net be hazardous to intellectual growth? To side with this argument, I also believe that although you can use the internet for recreational purposes, you can also use it to learn. You can broaden your knowledge in an instant by googling things that may be able to help you in life, information that you can use to resolve issues of everyday life. Although you can have fun and entertain yourself using the Youtube site, I know first hand that Youtube is actually quite useful for school as well. Certain topics such as math, science or anything you'd like to learn about is likely on Youtube, and essentially the internet. Therefore, learning for educational purposes isn't making you stupid. Using Google as a search engine can be the first step in finding what you're looking for- so, Google isn't making you stupid if you use it to broaden your knowledge.