Google, is it decreasing our intelligence?

The internet, is it really decreasing our reading capacity? I got a chance to read an article by “Nicholas Carr” who named his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. This article talks about how the internet has taken over and become a replacement for books. Books that were once used for researching and getting huge corpus’ of data are beginning to depreciate and the internet, well it is replacing them.
In Nicholas Carr’s article, one of his main topics is, “How is the internet making us stupid.” Sadly, many of use do not notice the fact that researching on the internet is messing with our minds because we are so caught up in the ease and glamour of not having to go to the library searching through thousands or books (many which had a bunch of different information, but not what we wanted). Because of the internet, it is much easier to type in the question that we have, click search, and read an article about whatever it is that we desire to learn. If you are asking yourself, “Well how is that making me stupid?” Well it is a good question that requires some thought because really, when I think about it without putting some deep thought in it, it doesn’t really make sense. Well this is how, by using the library and looking through different books researching an idea or topic we take time to let our brains work and work hard. While researching the “Old Fashion” way, a lot of times people spend several hours on researching a topic that takes us maybe all of fifteen to twenty minutes. Even though both methods get the answer to the topic or question that we may have, the longer method gets the brain working properly and increases the capacity of our knowledge. The shorter method may seem a lot easier and more convenient but it is slowly decreasing our minds.
The internet itself is decreasing the attention span of readers. Readers that use to be able to sit down and read large articles and books with many words and pages are finding themselves not able to do so. Nicholas says that reading is not and instinctive skill but rather it is something that our minds have to be taught how to do. Because the internet is making it easier to read and take in information, we as readers are becoming adequate to the effects it has. We are losing the capability of being able to read every detail that comes along with the story or information being given. Instead we just want the topic and the just of article of book.
Other major problem is that the internet is changing people to the point where their whole background and culture is being forgotten. Maryanne Wolf said in Nicholas’ article that “If we lose quiet spaces, or fill them up with content, we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture.” What she means by this is that technology is leaving culture behind and we are using it to fill the gap in which our culture is being missed. Technology is now being used everywhere all over the world. People are starting to use “items of technology” as an everyday thing. There are places in the world where the culture is such that technology was not needed. When it came about it ultimately changed the way the culture was originated from. Now people are starting to become similar culture wise because of the technological advances that are in our modern day world. For example, in the Indian culture, well their culture’s basis is pretty simple and not as advanced. As technology advanced, if started pulling people in and people became more caught up in technology that their culture beginnings are being forgotten in many ways.
As we known technology has made some dramatic changes in our lives in the past few years. It has its pros and its cons and it seems like there are a lot of cons that people didn’t even realize were there. Technology is changing the way of life for people in general. It has change the way we comprehend things and has also changed the amount of reading we can handle at one time. Technology has changed people’s culture and it has changed people’s way of thinking. Yes technology may make it easier to handle various tasks but it takes away some essential things that may come of value. Is it really worth it?