Is Google Making Us Stupid?

After reading this article, I was unnerved, if not hesitant to click on Firefox again. However, I obviously have. The thoughts this article dumped on me are a little muddled, but I’ll try to explain them as best I can.

I remember reading the title for the first time. I rolled my eyes, smirked a bit, and already had my answer. “Of course. Of course, Google was making us stupid! How stupid do you think I am to think otherwise?” Actually, don’t answer. I wasn’t really expecting one then and I definitely do not want one now. I’m embarrassed to say my thought processing gets a little clogged when I’m cynical. The rest of my mind, at those times, doesn’t always keep focused on anything other than being a nitwit.

In any case, when I finally drew my eyes away from the title to the first paragraph, I became amused. 2001: A Space Odyssey was something I’d merely heard about and only seen replicated. I’ve read a handful of artificial intelligence vs. humanity books, and figured I knew enough. I expected some kind of silly ranting with little backup after that, but Nicholas Carr had other ideas.

I was sucked in. My nitwit command center redirected the majority of its power to my eyes so that I could read faster. It was as if Carr was talking about my reading abilities and their, uh, latent demise. His lines concerning the media left me nodding. I also feel that I’m on a jet ski all too often, but the rest of the article pulled me in deep enough to taste the ocean again.

I have a confession. Once upon a time in eighth grade, I read Jane Eyre, by brilliant Jane Austin, and loved it to bits. For the winter holidays, my dad bought me both Dracula and Pride and Prejudice. I was ecstatic, started on Dracula right away (mostly to get the taste of Twilight out of my head), and later tried Pride and Prejudice. I haven’t finished either. It’ll be December again in no time and those books will probably be sitting on my shelves, getting acquainted with ever more dust. It’s not that I didn’t like the books. Really, Dracula went as far as to give me nightmares, making me read even more, but the way it was written deterred my interest. I was distracted left and right by computer, TV, and the not-so-random irritation that I couldn’t understand my own language every other paragraph. I have a small collection of book from around the First World War that I cannot concentrate on either. When I get too into texting, my English rots from “Hey friend, how goes it?” to “wats up?” I write differently depending on whether or not I’m holding a pencil or if I’m slumped in front of a computer. Here, I’ll stop the rant, and simply say that by page three of Carr’s article, I was remembering all this. I was remembering and desperate to know if he had answers.

Instead of a cure, he gave me more questions.

I think I almost imploded when Wolf made the point about our brains and our language. I’ve been wondering about how minds function differently between languages for a long time. I look at Japanese and I see beautiful squiggles where I wished for words; I see Spanish and I think of each word’s meaning, each sentence’s structure. I can’t help but instantly respond that way. Apparently, it really is how I’m hardwired.

But hardwire, as James Olds pointed out, can change, especially with our brains. Machines make us malleable. Here, I wondered how cuneiform captured the Sumerians, how paintbrushes pocketed the Chinese, how typewriters trapped the Americans and so on. Technology is rapidly growing, and while we may adapt with it, will we always be able to match it? With computers smarter than us, doing all our thinking, where will we be? We just might find ourselves as outdated as a 2002 cell phone, lost in Taylor’s “system”, and, if you’re keen on a techno-takeover, disposed of. (After all, who knows what your microwave is thinking…!)

And then there was Google. Oh yes, the title taker of this entire article, here at last. Around this point, I was considering panic. Finally, the opening that had amused me took an 180 degree turn just to slap me in the face. Google was fiddling with thoughts, reaping information, and generally sowing some good old fashion unease in my throat. Figuring that bashing my computer over its hard drive with a sturdy dictionary wasn’t the answer, I read on. There was no drive now for distraction.

Of course, Carr distracted me via a surge of reassurance. He made several points of “this has happened before, see? Writing, typewriters, thumbs, and books were big no-no’s once upon an era. Be skeptical of my worry.” However, I rolled my eyes at this warning and worried anyway. I know the Internet has helped. Information is open for the world like never before. I even have inklings that one day; people will look back and shake their heads at us. They will laugh at our dismay and distrust with computers thinking for us. They will smirk, claim superiority, and thusly freak out at whatever their new “typewriter” is. I know, because it’s exactly what has been happening ever since some prehistoric dude rounded some rocks and plopped a cart on top.

So in all, I loved Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I spoke with my mom on the topic, and her input and this article have changed my nitwit answer into an almost-question, because, I don’t know, maybe we’ve always been this way. Maybe it’s more of our reaction and later reliance on these technological crutches than anything. We can ask for help when we need it, but we can walk on our own too.

This has happened before—this revolution of thinking—and for better or for worse, we’re still here. Are we overacting? Is the evil super duper Google-god of doom looming over us, snatching our minds up as we search for pics of Sponge Bob, and skim through five paragraph articles? Was the tyrant-typewriter our first step into a demise of originality? Do I need to quit with the questions? Your answer, expect for the last inquiry, is as good a guess as any. After reading this, setting it aside and hungrily borrowing half the library, I’m still not sure how I feel. My use of Bing and Google has dropped, and I’m inside the words of books now more than I have been since eighth grade. It’s nice. Maybe all we need is a bit of balance in a diet of words. Less fast food, more homemade meals.

Unless, of course, that’s what Google wants us to think.

What are your thoughts?