Essay 1: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” summary and response
Summary:
In the article of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is changing the way our mind works and has some negative effects on our lives. In the article of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is changing the way our mind works and has some negative effects on our lives. The article begins with that the Internet is the excellent resource where we can find whatever we want for everything, and we are becoming more and more dependent on it in the field of writing, reading and so on. Afterwards, Carr claims that it has a large distraction on our mind, and we even cannot concentrate on a long reading material. As he said, technology is becoming more important than people. In the end, he also tells us that Google is trying to invent an artificial brain to replace our "slow" brains that we already have.
In the article of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is changing the way our mind works and has some negative effects on our lives. He views the idea that the Internet is an obstacle for individuals to think deeply, and it is rebuilding our mind and memory. As Carr said, nowadays, it is so difficult for him to focus on a long paper; instead, he always spends a lot of time on the Internet. In the past, the writers like him should stay in the library to study for several days, but now, because of the Internet, it just takes them a couple of minutes. As Marshall McLuhan, a media theorist argued that although media provided us with a huge number of information and thoughts, it also rebuilt our process of thought. A study of online research habits, done by scholars from University College London, shows that our ways of reading and thinking have a large change. From the study, it is obvious that users are using a new way to read instead of traditional sense: they often do a quick view of titles, contents pages and abstracts to get the information they want rapidly, and they seldom read the same materials twice even though they have already saved them online. According to a developmental psychologist named Maryanne Wolf, when we read on the Internet, we have lost our ability to understand the article, imagine from the article and think deeply without distraction by ourselves. As a result, we need to train our brains to translate the words we see into the words we understand.
Carr believes that our brains are malleable. Since we had the clock, we had started to schedule our time to eat, to work, to study, to sleep and to wake up by a clock instead of our senses. As the development of the technology, our concentration is being dispersed to much media like TV, the Internet, the mobile phones, e-mails and so on. The Internet’s effect is more than the size of screen, and it seems to be more important than human. As Google declared that they wanted to make information more organized and convenient so that we can use them anytime and anywhere. Afterwards, we will “absorb” more and more resources faster and faster, and everyone will be a thinker. Indeed, Google makes our life simple. Nonetheless, Carr is suspicious of it, maintaining that we have lost a quiet area to think deeper and read dedicatedly. Finally, he considers that most people seem to be the machine. As Kubrick’s dark prophecy said, “ as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
Response:
After reading “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” , I agree with Carr about how the Internet negatively influences our lives, and I start to be worried about my future. As we know, the Internet is more and more popular in the world, especially for our millennial. As the result of the advanced development of technology, we have to do a quick read or learn something as soon as we can in order to adapt in the environment. Due to the Internet, I can find anything I want so that it is more easily to get knowledge, and I am used to devoting less time and put less effort on study. I am becoming lazy to think deeper and to do much read, in consequence, my memory seems to be worse because the technology can help me to remember things and then remind me of them. I have already realized that how much of distraction the Internet has. When I read a long article, I have the same feeling as Carr’s that I cannot be concentrated on the reading, while I like to check my phones for many times or change to do other things. I spend much more time on Tweeter and Facebook, and I thought I knew everything of the world through the social media, but actually, I forgot to think of the news deeply and critically.

Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 91-101. Print.