Here's my summary and outline of Nicolas Carr's 2008 Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which I prepared for my students this semester (see discussion here).
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic July/August 2008)
Summary
Are we becoming like HAL, the supercomputer featured in
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,
losing our ability to think? Nicolas Carr suggests as much in his article, “Is
Google Making us Stupid?” published in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic. The article begins with
Carr’s admission that he, like HAL, feels his mind “is going,” that is, he is
losing his ability to concentrate or maintain any level of sustained reading.
He attributes this change to the amount of time he now spends reading material
online and suspects that the type of
reading he does online is “chipping away at [his] capacity for concentration
and contemplation.”
Carr’s theory is bolstered not only anecdotally, with fellow
writers expressing similar experiences, but scientifically, as an emerging body
of research suggests that we “may well be in the midst of a sea change in the
way we read and think.” Studies seem to suggest that how we read influences how
we think, and that, because we are reading more material online, our brains are
actually adapting to the kind of reading we do online. In other words, it’s
possible that the way we read actually shapes “the neural circuits inside our
brains.”
By analogy, Carr relates the story of how the 19th
century German philosopher Friederich Nietzsche, who was losing his eyesight,
began to type his thoughts with his eyes closed. Many noted at the time how his
“already terse prose [became] even tighter,” the implication being that the
brain, being malleable, will adapt to the technology it is using most
frequently. Carr’s point: the Internet affects cognition, causing our brains to
adapt, and, consequently, traditional forms of media need to adapt, as well.
What does all this have to do with Google? Another analogy. Staying
in the 19th century, Carr describes how the mechanical engineer
Frederick Winslow Taylor revolutionized productivity and efficiency in the steel
industry by his methodical scientific analysis of how machinists and machines
worked. His objective being, “Maximum speed, maximum efficiency, maximum
output,” Taylor developed a “utopia of efficiency,” which relied more on science
(facts) than “rule of thumb” (practice).
This same approach applies, Carr suggests, to the realm of the
mind, since information is a kind of commodity. Carr suggests that Google’s
objective, like Taylor’s, is ultimate efficiency: “What Taylor did for the work
of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.” Google seems to be on a
quest for the “ultimate search engine,” a Hal-like artificial intelligence that
could be “directly attached” to our brains. This objective makes sense if you
assume, as the founders of Google apparently do, that “the human brain is just
an outdated computer.”
Carr concedes that his fears may be overwrought. He admits
that Socrates “bemoaned the development of writing” and that the Gutenberg
printing press “set off another round of teeth gnashing.” He advises the reader
to “be skeptical of my skepticism” about Google. Nevertheless, he does ask the
reader to at least consider the consequences of the loss of “quiet spaces” of
the mind. “Deep reading,” he writes, citing one leading researcher, “is indistinguishable
from deep thinking.” Carr closes by evoking HAL’s final, poignant plea for the
astronaut to “stop.” It’s HAL, Carr muses, who comes across as more human, and
the astronaut more machine-like. “That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark
prophesy,” he concludes. “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our
understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into
artificial intelligence.”
Is Google Making Us Stupid?*
by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic July/August 2008)
Outline
Introduction Author
begins by analogy, comparing his mind to the supercomputer “HAL” from Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey” saying, “My mind is going.”
I. A Sea Change in the
Way We Read and Think (¶ 1-5)
A. Anecdotal
Evidence (his friends’ experiences)
B. Scientific
Evidence ( “power browsing” rather than reading)
C. Reading More
but Thinking Less (“a different kind of reading
means a different
kind of thinking”)
D. Reading is Not
an Instinctive Skill (“the type of reading we
practice
shapes the neural circuits inside our brains”)
II. Intellectual Technologies
Give and Take Away (¶ 6-16)
A. Nietzche’s
Typewriter Symbolizes the Connection Between
Equipment
and Thought
B. The Malleable
Brain: The Adult Mind is Plastic and Able to
Reprogram
Itself
C. The Mechanical
Clock Creates a Disassociation Between Time
and Human
Events
D. How the
Internet Affects Cognition
1.
The Internet Absorbs Other Technologies
2.
Traditional Media is Transformed as it is Forced to
Adapt
III. Taylor’s
Algorithm—“A Utopia of Efficiency” (¶ 17-19)
A. Taylor’s
Observation of Workers and Machines at Midvale
Steel Plant
B. Maximum Speed,
Maximum Efficiency, Maximum Output:
The
Substitution of Science (facts) for “Rule of Thumb”
(practice).
C. Fast Forward
to Today: Taylor’s Ethic of Industrial
Manufacturing
Now Governs the Realm of the Mind
IV. What is Google’s
End Game? (¶ 20-25)
A. The Science of
Measurement: Behavioral Data, Algorithms,
and Me
B. The Perfect
Search Engine: Information is a Kind of
Commodity
C. Can Artificial
Intelligence be Connected to Human Brains?
D. No Room for
Ambiguity or Contemplation in Google’s
Business
Model
V. Overreaction or
Valid Concern? (¶ 26-30)
A. Socrates’ Fears: The Development of Writing Will Become
a Substitute
for Wisdom
B. Squarciaficos’ Fear: Printing Press Will Lead to
Intellectual
Laziness
C. Deep Reading = Deep Thinking: The Internet is Displacing
“Quiet
Spaces” of
the Mind
D. The Author’s Fear: Our Intelligence Flattens, and we are
Becoming
“HAL”
