Christopher Barefoot
Mrs. Stein
English 111.4402
20 September 2013
The Internet Brain
Have you ever read a chapter in a book just to get to the end and realize you have no idea what you just read? Maybe after reading the first couple of paragraphs of an interesting article, it becomes too much of a struggle to concentrate and finish the whole thing. The rest of the article is skimmed in an effort to find the main points and achieve that instant gratification. These are not unusual occurrences, and they are becoming more prevalent. Author and columnist Nicholas Carr discusses this phenomenon and makes an argument for what he thinks might be the cause. Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in The Arlington Reader (336-344), explores his thoughts and feelings on his belief that the Internet has “reprogrammed” his mind. While the Internet might not actually be making people stupid, it certainly is having an effect on their thinking and their ability to process and absorb information.
Carr alludes to a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in an attempt to draw in and connect with the reader. He describes a scene near the end of the film in which the astronaut Dave narrowly escapes death after coming to the realization that the ship’s supercomputer HAL is malfunctioning. Dave is left with no choice other than to disconnect the memory circuits that control HAL’s artificial brain. All the while HAL pleads with Dave to stop the disassembly saying that he can feel his mind going. In this particular scene, roles are reversed. The computer conveys more emotion and human characteristics while expressing its despair and fear at the disassembly process. The human takes on the more robotic and machinelike characteristics as he goes about his task calmly and coldly. Carr concludes that he knows how HAL feels because, he says, “I have an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain” (337). Through interviews and published statistics, Carr shows that he is not the only one experiencing this change.
Several examples throughout the article show how the Internet is affecting individuals’ reading and thinking habits. In his own account, Carr expresses a concern that the Internet is limiting his capacity for concentration and contemplation. He writes, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (338). Bruce Friedman, a pathologist at the University of Michigan Medical School, commented on his altered mental habits saying, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print” (338). He admits to feeling that anything longer than three or four paragraphs is just too much for his mind to deal with.
It is not only speculation that peoples’ mental habits are changing. Carr cites a published study of online research habits conducted by scholars from University College London. The five-year study proposes that people might be going through a period of change in the way they read and think. The scholars examined usage of two popular research sites in the United Kingdom and noted that users tended to engage in a skimming technique. In their study, they report, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense” (338). Users would generally read no more than a couple of pages before they were moving on to another source. Once they had moved on from a source, they typically would not return to that same source for a second visit.
From a personal point of view, I can say I have noticed a change in myself as well as in my friends. It is not a change in the way we read and absorb information; it is more of a change in our social behavior brought about by another technology. Before cell phones became so prominent, we were a close-knit group of friends. We were always doing things together and had been for years. We had been through everything with each other. Now we only see each other on rare occasions and never get together as a group. When we were all still spending time together, near the end of our group socializing days, we were already becoming distracted from one another. My friends and I had our cell phones with us at all times. Someone was always checking messages and making or receiving a phone call. We could no longer get together and just be with each other enjoying the company of friends. These tiny handheld gadgets had been unintentionally invited to be part of the group and started to take over. I do not blame the disbandment of our group on cell phones alone, but they certainly did contribute to the new, less-social situation.
Oddly enough, some of the same technology that aided in the demise of our group is now helping to keep us in touch. Smartphones have given us the ability to stay in contact when we are on the go and give us more ways to communicate with each other. With a single handheld device, we have access to a phone, e-mail, text messages, and Facebook. Sometimes I think if it were not for Facebook, I would not know what was going on in any of these friends’ lives. Of course, keeping in touch electronically is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction and could never take the place of personal contact. At least these new technologies have helped to keep us from losing touch completely.
Near the essay’s conclusion, Carr quotes playwright Richard Foreman who says, “we risk turning into ‘pancake people’ – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button” (344). This negative view of the direction of our culture is one I have to say I agree with. It seems to me that the more information we have access to the less we get to know about any one subject. Access to too much information is causing an “information overload” of our minds. It is all too much for our brains to process and retain. I had never given this particular aspect of technology much consideration until reading Carr’s article. This is probably because I have not noticed the effect in myself. I have never been much of a reader, so a lack of deep concentration and knowledge was an issue long before I ever used the Internet for the first time. Although I never developed a joy for reading, at least I had many years to try reading and getting into books before the Internet was an option. It is somewhat troubling to think that younger people might grow up with so much information at their fingertips that entire generations could lose, or never develop, interest in reading anything longer than a few of paragraphs.