The issue of Google and technology taking over human beings was brought in an interesting way in this article. Nicholas Carr's overall point of this essay was that humans are no longer capable of deep reading because the internet (especially google) has made us lazy.
Do I agree with his statement? Personally, yes I do. A lot of his points were valid and I shamefully say that a lot of them apply to me. "What the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation." True story. I'm trying to write this blog, but all that's on my mind is how much I want to check my facebook and tumblr. I sometimes think that I have ADD, but really that's just my excuse. I just have no concentration because the burden of the internet is always distracting me.
"Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski." Fabulous comparison. Google makes it a little too easy to find what you're looking for, which almost makes it inaccurate. When you google something, usually there's millions and sometimes billions of results. What percent of people actually look what's beyond the tenth page? Usually people will just decide on the first or second result rather than paging through and looking at the.. let's just say 584,236 result. Although Google is incredibly useful most of the time, I do not doubt that it's making us a little lazy.
At the same time, why is reading off of something electronic so bad? Is it different if I read The Great Gasby off of a Kindle instead of paper in a book? No... I'm still reading the same book, I'm just using my resources. What's so bad about that? Researchers are afraid that all this technology is forming "artificial brains." We have a vast network of information at the touch of a button. I call that progress... not a problem.
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