Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:

1. At various points in his essay Carr employs the term “deep reading” to describe an alternative to the sort of reading that people do online. Indeed, Carr’s own essay might be understood as an example of writing that encourages deep reading. Carefully retrace Carr’s entire argument, noting where the phrase “deep reading” appears. When it does, is Carr merely restating a point he has already made, or is he adding something that extends his previous insights? Is his essay meant to make a single argument, or is he trying to demonstrate a process of questioning that might go on even after the act of reading is done?

2. One striking element of Carr’s argument is his use of illustrative anecdotes. For example, he devotes three paragraphs to the German philosopher Nietzsche’s experience with learning to type. Later, Carr recaps in some detail the ideas of several theorists who have explored the way mechanical clocks changed how people think. Still later he recounts the enormous influence of Taylor’s experiment with “scientific management.” What are the relationships among these anecdotes? If Carr simply wants to make the point that technology shapes our mental processing, why does he choose examples from the past? 

3. As Carr develops his argument, he weaves together citations—the words and ideas of many different writers, from journalists, programmers, and scientists to philosophers, historians and sociologists. What function do these citations serve other than to assure his readers that Carr has received a very broad education? What do Carr’s citations tell us about the way his own thinking has developed? How might the cited writers have helped him to think more carefully than any single person could manage by himself? At what points do you see the thinking of others, and at what points does Carr seem to begin thinking independently?

Questions for Writing:  

1. It is relatively easy to map out the differences between deep reading and the “foraging” behavior that the Internet promotes. But what consequences might follow from the Internet’s emergence as a “universal medium”? What might be the costs of this total dominance, if it ever comes to pass? Increasingly, music and the visual arts as well as forms of written communication all get siphoned through the Internet. What are the benefits of multiple conduits for knowledge—books, magazines, newspapers, radio, vinyl records, movies, even phones—and what would we lose if this diversity were absent? Compare, for example, sitting in a movie theater with watching the same film online. Remember to explore the larger contexts as well—that is, the physical and social environments in which information circulates.

2. Even while we create technology, it is also re-creating us. What can be learned from Carr’s essay about the complex relations between technology and the human race? Is it an illusion to assume that humans are in control, or that we can somehow remain unchanged no matter what we do? Even though a massive amount of evidence—from history as well as contemporary science—suggests that our nature is so pliable that new technologies can deeply change us, why do you think we tend to remain unconvinced? Has a belief in a singular “human nature” and a permanent “core self” kept us from responding to dangers that should have been obvious by now? Even though the benefits of the Internet might outweigh the costs, how can we detect its potential problems before they become gravely destructive? Finally, is it actually impossible to control the growth of new technology, or is the belief in unstoppable change a modern-day superstition?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:  

1. In rather different ways, both Carr and Oliver Sacks are part of a larger cultural shift: a turning away from the “mind” to the “brain” as the key term for understanding ourselves. Since ancient times, philosophers have written on the mind and on faculties like reason and imagination, which they saw as unchanging and universal. By contrast, the brain is now understood to be highly “plastic”—that is, subject to deep changes in the way it operates, depending on the environment. In what ways might this shift from mind to brain transform how we view the human nature? On the basis of your reading of Sacks and Carr, would you say a fixed “human nature” exists at all?

2. In “Immune to Reality,” Daniel Gilbert makes an argument about the complexity of human motivations, arguing that “people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing.” He means that we often overlook our real motives, which are largely unconscious, preferring to make up reasons that seem to fit with our conscious assumptions and beliefs. Often the result is unhappiness, even when we get exactly what we want. Using Gilbert as your starting point, take a second look at the promise of the Internet, and then compare it to the reality. When we sing the praises of this new technology, are we actually engaged in what Gilbert calls “cooking the facts”? Does Carr’s essay support the view that the Internet has been wildly oversold?