Tip of the Iceberg

Tip of the Iceberg

After reading “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Mr. Carr it really made me begin to think about society in general.  The society we live in demands easy access and high speed to get our daily tasks accomplished.  I agree with Mr. Carr’s view on how the Internet has began to make us less intuitive while reading long articles and information, but overall disagree it makes us dumb.

            From personal experience I can relate to many statements Mr. Carr presents.  I know that when I am presented with an email or text of any sort I immediately examine how long it is.  This has come natural for me and many others I feel growing up in our society.  With our generation leading the high-speed era I feel that we no longer take the time to read in depth all the material we are given.  We simply “skim” as Mr. Carr put it to find only the information we are looking for.  It is not that we don’t have the time to read it but even I notice myself becoming less interested in something that may extend over a few paragraphs.  This however does not make us dumb for not reading all of the content.  We are in an age where technology is only getting better by the day so how could we be doing so if we were dumb?  We wouldn’t be able to accomplish these strides in society if we were less intelligent then we used to be. 

            It is now part of our culture to do everything fast paced and in result of that we have shortened everything to mold to our thinking.  We still receive the information we need to understand but in a more condensed manner.  Could it be that we are becoming lazier? Sure, but definitely not dumb.  According to many laziness is evident even in the younger generations says Hillary Karbowski of the Michigan Kalamazoo Gazette (MLive).  We look for the quickest ways to find our information and move on but at the end of the day we have the information we need.  Society demands quickness.  Look at how everything around us is changing.  Google is simply a shortcut to thin out what we do not want and only process the relevant things to us.

            I find Mr. Carr’s argument somewhat contradicting due to the length of his article.  He stated himself that blogs that are several paragraphs long he only skims nowadays.  So why is it that he made his argument pages long? If he knows we are becoming less open to reading page long theories I believe to make his points worth while he would have shortened his article, thus explain our laziness but not our intention to become any less smart.  As a whole we as a society are continuing to stay at the peak of technology, which takes smarts, while we may be lazy we as a society are definitely not “dumb”.

Karbowski, HIllary. "Our Turn: Is Society Becoming Too Lazy?" MLive. MIchigan 
     Kalamazoo Gazzette, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2012. <http://www.mlive.com/opinion/ 
     kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/02/our_turn_is_our_society_becomi.html>.