Are We Getting Smarter? Or Lazier?

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nicholas Carr makes many good points in his article about Google making people more stupid, but upon reading it, I didn't think we were getting more stupid but lazier. Maybe being lazy can be considered getting stupid to some people, but for me they are separate words. One of the examples Carr uses in his article is about a blog writer, Scott Karp, who used to read books all the time and now can't bring himself to read more than a couple paragraphs of something. I tried to think about why this is. I remember talking in class about how we don't read things as carefully as we should, such as the agreements, or policies of a certain site. We automatically hit agree, and move on to use whatever we wanted to get access to. I, myself, am a culprit of doing this. Now, I try and read the agreements before clicking 'agree' but for I feel like for my generation, we don't really think about the consequences but rather focus on what we want to do, and get there however we can.

I am not saying everyone does this, but (going off topic) how many of us text while driving? Even though we hear about accidents that happen while people are texting while driving. Getting back on topic, I believe that because most of us are able to go to school and get an education, that we are all capable of reading. The fact is when we, as students, are put in front of a huge report that has an abstract with it, the first thing we will read is the abstract, and then try and read the full report, but sometimes if the report is really long, we get too lazy to finish it, especially since we were able to read what the main points of the report was about.

Google does provide us with a of information, and strives to give us everything we want. Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," which it as done and is always improving. But think about how easy it makes to access information. We still have the capability to drive in a car and go to a library to find a book about certain information, but instead since we can get this information at our fingertips, we choose to use the computer and Google. Going along with this, newspapers have felt a huge hit from the access we can receive on the internet. Why sit down and read a whole paper, that has news, when we can access news on Google faster, with more topics, and can read smaller articles about it. "Still, newspapers are unlikely to disappear" according to an OECD report.* So then do we not enjoy sitting down anymore drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper? Instead, if we want to read the news, we will do it online, if that.

But since Google is providing us with so much information we are just able to absorb more, I don't think that it is necessarily making us more stupid. It is true, that many things we used to do, we don't do as frequently, but I feel like it ultimately comes down to that we have a choice. We can go out to a library and get a book, especially if you are on a campus, where there is a library walking distance. We are making these sites, someone came up with Google, and many others are using it. If it is making us stupid, we should stop using it. That is a fact, but since it allows us to do so much stuff, why stop using it when it can save you time or evening moving from one place to another? All in all, I don't think that Google is making us stupid, but lazier.

* Robinson, James. UK and US see heaviest newspaper circulations declines. The Guardian Online. June 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/17/newspaper-circulation-oecd-report