Is Google making us stupid?

Google is changing how people read, write and access everything.  With having so much information so readily available, people are using and reading it in a different manor.  People want to take in as much information as possible, but they no longer want to read a long novel to do so.  Reading on the Internet is much different than reading on paper. When someone reads something on the Internet, it has to be a short enough that it will not over whelm the reader and interesting enough to keep the readers attention. If it is not this, the reader will move on to something else because he can find something more interesting to read instead. Getting accustomed to reading short articles or summaries on the web makes it hard to then transition back and read a novel. Readers today want just a summary of the important facts and do not want to spend the time finding the facts themselves. As reading becomes less in depth, writing naturally does too.  Writers now have to write a shorter engaging and almost summary like piece in order to get people to read it.  Google is not making us stupid, it is just changing how one reads and writes.  Since there is this change from past or more traditional writing, one might consider it to be worse. This is not the first time though some technology has changed how one reads and writes. In Carr’s article he describes how other people thought different technological advances like the printing press and typewriter changed how one reads a writes. These changes do not automatically make one more stupid, but since it is different from what is expected it is often considered bad or worse. 

This change in how reading and writing is done can clearly be seen through this class. Firstly, we kept an Internet log, not a log of books, magazines or printed material we read for a week.  Our Internet logs show too that we are fast paced, not spending long periods of time on any one site reading something.  Blogging also is new form of writing that has strayed from traditional writing. A majority of writing for our class is our blogs, not essays that would be expected in a traditional writing class.  These do not make us stupid; people are just afraid of change thinking it will make us stupid.