Recently in my Philosophical Ethics class, we were assigned to read an article by Nicholas Carr entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article was written for The Atlantic in 2008 but is still relevant, if not even more applicable, today. It seems as though the influx of reliance on and necessity for technology is having a more serious effect on our brains than we may come to realize. The demand for faster sources of information is chipping away at our ability to concentrate and altering the way we think and process information. Although it may seem as though we are demanding shorter bits of information out of convenience or laziness, it’s not just about that; the way in which we think is also changing.
Think about it, while you’re sitting here reading this piece, you are likely listening to music, checking your cellphone, and/or quickly clicking from page to page, link to link, on your Facebook profile, surfing the web and “reading” along the way. When I first sat down to read this 11-and-a-half page article, I got up three times to check my phone and once to change my music. While writing this article, I have music playing and my phone sitting within reach. My brain is hopping from one task to another, and yet this is normal. All of the available technology induces a loss of concentration. And although you very well may be reading more right now than you would be if you sat down to read a book in the traditional sense, what you’re reading here is not going to have the same effect on your brain as would a classic novel. Maryanne Wolf says, “We are not only what we read, we are how we read.” And therefore, when we do not critically analyze advanced literary sources or readings, but instead read tidbits of information at a quick glimpse, we are not training our brains to think or process critically.
Even for those of us who grew up reading heavy novels, or heavy amounts of novels, as we grow in a society that is greatly reliant on technology, our lifestyles are naturally going to change. Adults' brains are transforming in the same way the brains of young children are. The Internet, what was once a mere outlet for entertainment and pleasure, has become an incredible tool that so many people rely on. It has changed the way research is conducted; rather than spending hours in a library searching through physical encyclopedias and primary sources, it is now possible to go online and access all of these things in the comfort of your own home. It’s almost as though people are going online as a way to avoid ”reading in the traditional sense.”
But all of this easily accessible information at a fast pace seems rather positive, no? You need the answer to a trivia question? Google it. You need a recipe? The weather forecast? The year Donald Trump was born? Google it! The whole world is at your fingertips with Google, but is this really teaching us anything? Or is the amount of technology that we are absorbing transforming us into merely robotic machines that no longer think or store information for themselves? Carr’s article ends with this sentence: “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” We won’t get too philosophical here; but it is important to realize the changes that are occurring, and the effect technology is having on our society as a whole. Technological advances will continuously change the way we think, process information, and go about our daily lives, and we will accustom ourselves to these changes, whether we realize it or not.
