Ten Percent

Nicholas Carr writes an article titled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" I read this in the most unbiased way possible for me so that I would not make any judgments about his thoughts until I had read the work through completely. After this I made my judgment and for the most I disagreed with his views and I think the generation gap we share is the cause of this. Non-surprisingly I Google searched what year he was born and with a consensus of several sites I concluded 1959 had to the correct. Finding this out did not surprise me at all considering his attitude toward Google and the web in general. One clue that set me off he must be older was him saying the "Net" for the internet for me that is old fashioned and it's just referred to as the "web". Another thing was how he said his reading patterns have been affected through the years with the pros and cons the internet has created.

In my opinion it is safe to say that he does think Google along with the web as a whole is making us stupid because he thinks we store information gained through the web in our short-term memory and that we are less able to read deeply and thus think deeply. I actually can see from his point of view but I have to argue with it because I feel opposite about it. Using myself as an example I have grown up with the internet since it becoming big unlike him with it starting out. Because of this I think I have developed a different way of thinking than he has because I have always had the convenience of the internet. For me I have learned how to incorporate deep thought with the use of the internet. This may be the result of my ability and perhaps my generations’ ability to multi-task with great efficiency. Since my adulthood has begun I have learned a few things about my thinking habits and those of others too. For me I actually cannot concentrate unless there is noise around me. In fact as I sat in my dorm room reading the article and then commenting on it via this blog I had been listening music this entire time. This sort of example can be identified with any group of students.

I cannot really explain why I have to be doing something else with my brain (i.e. listening to music while doing homework) but I do know that this has not made it harder for me to store information in my long-term memory nor do I think I have gained less knowledge. On the whole I think this way of functioning is a new step for human brain development. Now I do not want to say this with absolute declaration but I propose that over a long period of time the interaction of humans with the internet may initiate a higher percent of brain usage than the current ten percent because we humans may learn how to process and categorize information like that of a computer thus being able to comprehend and store greater amounts of information.