Blog # 8 "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is a collection of opinions from many great minds. He brings together these individuals statements in order to make a strong connection between human kind’s intelligence and how its been influenced by technology. As well, he suggests our intelligence will continue to be manipulated as technology advances. In contrast to some skeptics’ beliefs, Carr provides several examples of how our brain adapts to new technologies. However, he does state, that with the advancement of the computer and its overtaking of the literature world, we are now more easily distracted and consequently less focused. All in all, we are not any less intelligent; we are a different kind of intelligent than what we use to be.

            At first, I was not too fond of Carr’s exposition. I felt as though he was a lazy writer due to all the uses of citations. But that was only for the first two pages. Then, I began to really reflect/ponder about what he wrote. I started to make the connection to how our intelligence has been manipulated with the advancement of technology. Simultaneously as each new support was given, I was beginning to anticipate Carr’s next facts that were to provided. In addition, I was interpreting his words and making my own inferences. For instance, do the advancements in technology today, which our youth will become cultured to, mean that children now will ultimately be able to obtain a higher level of intelligence than that of their predecessors. What is even more profound, according to Michio Kaku a Japanese Theoritical Physicist and Futurist, is that the technology we have today is at an exponential growth rate and in ten years it may possibly be 1,000 thousand times greater. So within in our lifetime, who knows, we could be living in a “Wally World”.