Google: Good or Bad?

            For this week’s PLN I got an article called “Is Google Making Us Stupid”  by Nicholas Carr. It talks about how Google and the internet have made everything easily accessible to everyone and how it is making us stupid. Google and other websites have short little articles that are easy for us to read but when we get long articles and books we get distracted and we go off topics. Facebook and texting has also done this to us. This has happened to a lot of people. Our mental habits have been cut and it’s getting worse. Bruce Friedman from the University of Michigan Medical School said, “I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” This has an effect on the best of us.

            I also feel this way a lot of the time when I’m reading a book or an article. I tend to “power browse” as said in the article. I think Google and the internet has done this to me. I have gotten so use to reading short little stuff like blogs and text messages. The internet has made everything easier, we no longer have to go to the library for hours to find information we can just “Google” it. The article said, “When we read online, she says, we tend to become ‘mere decoders of information.’ Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.” We can’t get the same experience as we do when we are in deep reading with traditional text. Even though we have gotten easily distracted over time, the internet and Google has been a positive in everyday life. It has made research fast accessible and it has expanded our mind and in a way making us smarter.

            Nicholas Carr is making valid points in his article but I do not agree with everything he says. He has too much of a negative view on the internet and Google. He needs to look at the positive side and see how Google benefits us.