Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine - The Atlantic - Nicholas Carr - 11 views
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tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.
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bamk340 on 06 Mar 10I like his use of metaphor in this sentence, comparing his brain with the computer.
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Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
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“bounce”
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The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.
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. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.
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This is exactly how I have been starting to feel because after years of browsing the internet. He hit the nail right on the head.
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Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized
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The problem with this assumption is that the author assumes it is within Page and Brin's agenda to formulate ideas and decisions for us. He states that it is a possibility that they would like to replace our our minds with artificial intelligence.
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Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine.
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This is what my initial thought of what this article was going to be about; just another person problematizing a situation.
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This is especially true but I dont think we are expecting the worst of this new technology, I just think we are understanding the possible negative implications it can have on our everyday life
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He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”
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I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences.
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Again, this is similar to how I feel and how my friends appear to act sometimes. It is something that I've felt but I've just never been again to put my finger on it.
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we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice
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I'm sure the same issue arose during the popularization of television and its tendency to push individuals away from literacy.
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Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
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After speaking to a friend about how websites and the content within are formed, it is supposedly forbidden to write long paragraphs and such. Most content is writen in the form of bullent point and short paragraphs that are written to get directly to the point.
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As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
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There might be something to be said for "obeying the clock," though - the shift from "listening to our gut," to a more calculated and precise view of the world seems like it would be helpful in terms of scientific thought and progress.
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The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
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Perhaps, though in any case, the desire for more knowledge is nothing new. One might argue that, to a certain extent, breath without depth can help people reach a fuller view of a particular subject, and then, if they need/want to, it is also easy to find those lengthier sources.
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That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
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Though the article brings up good points to think about, it is all canclled out for me with this over-dramatic statement. *sigh*
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As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, 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.”
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Pancakes are tasty, yet dense, and can be healthy for you if you use the right ingredients and toppings. Who is to say that this new spreading out of culture is bad? Perhaps it is encouraging people to learn about things that they wouldn't have thought of before. The links out encourage new processes and connections to information previously unconnected. Especially at USC, where there is even a scholarship for those majoring in two seemingly unrelated disciplines at the same time, there is agreement that subjects previously thought to be unrelated can both be helped by a union of science and art. The Renaissance was full of those "pancake people," people striving to know and learn about the place they lived and how they thought about it. Do we think of the Renaissance as a time where people cast down depth of knowledge? The other side of the pancake is tempting indeed.
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"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?”
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Imagery, classic film reference, and a poignant example of the fear of computers in the 21st century. Could you ask for a better opening line?
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The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
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Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings
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Very interesting hypothesis... I've wondered this myself when on page 700 of "War And Peace."
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“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”
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As a student of architecture, I can see many parallels between this example and new computer-based architecture programs that are fundamentally changing the ways architects design.
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“systematize everything”
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The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well.
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He raises an interesting point - but is this the way our minds were meant to work, and have other forms of media merely been restrictive in their relatively slow output of information?
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HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency.
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This is a great summation of the incredible eloquence of Kubrick's masterful film, a metaphor which operates very well in the context of this article.
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It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
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This is very true. I was also feeling this way. People is trying to avoid reading in traditional way. They only want to absorb informations that are simple, easy, and fast. It was like they are getting lazy and lazy over time. -
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When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.”
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This "mere decoders of information" is so true! Since decoding information is to understand, break down, and interpret sets of communication and infromation in our brain clearly, reading online is trying to jump this process really fast.
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It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.
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I cannot argue a single word in this sentence. Internet and computer is not becoming, it is our part of life.
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“Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
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powerful use of quotes from the film - causes an association with the feeling you get when watching the scene
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The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.
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he acknowledges the good parts about the internet before beginning his main argument
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The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.
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The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.
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As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets.
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Imagery. It's like a domino effect...once we've become used to power browsing through the internet we expect the same thing from all other types of media.
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“I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,
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so many applications has shortened my attention span has dramatically shortened
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But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self
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The focus of online reading is drastically differnt from reading traditional text. Close-readings are not all too common--the prevalence of quick-reading reflects our obssession with immediate satisfaction. Personally, I find reading on the computer can be rather straining, so I do find myself skimming a lot to get through whatever I'm reading(without printing). I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons this is the case. But, as the author mentions, a new way of thinking comes derives from this reading method. The author suggests that we don't make the same deep connections reading online these days. Ths is presented as resding light and an unsettling direction which is even a threat to "self." Incorporating identity in the argument lends power to the article.
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Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter
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And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.”
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This is a frightening idea that long ago they were worried that reading books would fill people with knowledge when they weren't knowledgeable. Now we face bigger problems because less people are reading because their focus has shifted to more unimportant issues.
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Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”
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“Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”
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For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind.
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Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds.
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Seeking out information on the internet or through books is different, not necessarily a matter of what is a better way of gaining knowledge. They are different processes altogether so our experiences will be different. We're not learning less from the internet, we're just learning in a different context.
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Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today.
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this is especially true for me, there is no time in the day i am not checking my email, text, or facebook. They have become an interactive schedule planner that seem never to turn off
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I think I know what’s going on.
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"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?
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malfunctioning machine
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Over the pa
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Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave
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"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?”
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brain
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Nicholas Carr
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The Atlantic Home Monday, September 12, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Business Entertainment International Technology National Life Magazine video Presented By Obama to Congress: Pass My Jobs Bill Immediately Julia Edwards 2012 Candidates as Active NFL Players Chris Good Why Perry Could Win on Social Security Matthew Dowd Presented by // // What if Americans Don't Want More Stimulus? Daniel Indiviglio America's Jobs Crisis in 17 Charts aut
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"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?
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g nearly been sent to
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What the Internet is d
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Making
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supercomp
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"Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives-or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts-as the Internet does today." This idea is extremely true in my life as I feel much of my communication is via text, facebook, or email. I at times almost finding myself losing touch with reality and physical contact and becoming complacent sending some non emotional or important information to a friend. The lack of physical communication can at times make me feel like a recluse. But at the same time, the easy and quick nature of this new technology almost makes it difficult to go back to the way things were
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"Just as there's a tendency to glorify technological progress, there's a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine." This too is another really important point, the efficiency of the Net and other sources via the computer should not entirely take the place of reading of books and other sorts of literature that existed far before the Net. Much of what I read on the Net is useless chit chat that is merely for my entertainment. And the useful and thought provoking information on the Net is simply a copy of literature from a book or a law journal, it just is easier to access on my computer from my bed. In this regard, the Net is a great service, you just have to remember what information is useful and what information is not.
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The recurring theme that the Net is an extension allowing Google and other companies to feed us more advertisements and learn more about us is somewhat startling. The fact that every website and email we write can be tracked and looked at is a little invasive to say the least. In this sense, the Net's alluring attractions are also a trick to market us and use our information to exploit our monies.
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The focus of online reading is drastically different from traditional text. Close-readings are not as common--the prevalence of quick-reading reflects the obssession with immediate satisfaction. Personally, I find reading on the computer can be straining, so I do find myself skimming a lot just to get through whatever I'm reading(without printing). I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons this is the case.But, as the author brings up, we also think differently. The author suggests that we don't make the same deep connections in reading. This is presented as reading light and an unsettling direction.
