Discussing: Google Is Making Us Stupid or Smarter? (Essay Sample)

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Is Google making us stupid?
Google is a technology company from the United States of America that operates at a multinational level. One of its prominent products is the internet search engine that goes by the same name-Google Search. The use of Google Search engine is usually applied for numerous purposes. These goals include leisure and research among others. It is arguable that Google is making people stupid. There are several reasons to believe that Google is indeed making people stupid.
Unlike the past time, when internet search engines such as Google were either not known or uncommon to most people, information does not require tiresome reading. Carr in his article, ‘Is Google making us stupid?’(2008) Says," a hyperlink connects you to the information you were looking for." Before the advent of Google and other Internet-based search engines, one needed to bury their heads in large books for hours to get the little piece of information they needed. In that reading, as much as they get tired, people gain more knowledge than they look for. This means that if these search engines like Google were not there, people would clearly be more knowledgeable that with the presence of these search engines (Carr, 90).
Google gives the accurate information the searcher is looking for without letting the researcher go through the available information. In this instance, Google filters most of the information that the reader may not need in that particular search. In the cases where one has to read books to gain the precise information they need, they would have to go through so much information that as much as they could be useless during the time of searching, this made people more knowledgeable. Google has made it so easy to spot the exact piece of knowledge from the internet databases and use it. This has made people less knowledgeable as compared to those persons of pre-Google error. Scott Carp, a blogger about online sources, admits that he can no longer read long blogs beyond four paragraphs. He also says that he cannot read long articles written on paper. This then proves that he had become lazier that he was prior to when he began using the internet for research purposes. Like other Google users, he has become so lazy that he cannot read any meaningful long text without losing their concentration. Michael McLuhan, theorist of media issues in the 1960s said that the media shapes the way people think. This explains why people with a higher tendency of reading via the internet are lazy, and their minds are not as active as those who research in physical libraries (Carr, 89).
Google has reduced the need for people to memorize concepts. Due to the easiness of fetching information from the internet using Google, the need to remember large amounts of information has been reduced. As Carr says, the hyperlinks do not just direct people to the knowledge or information they, seek. The hyperlinks draw the readers closer to the search items. The fact that it has become easy to access the information means that a student, for example, does not need to remember what the teacher teaches. Instead, they can just wait and use Google to find the information when they do their homework. In other words, the need to know things has been reduced by the presence of Google. According to Carr’s article, the readers of online publications do not have to do the usual reading as it is done in books, they may just browse through headings and titles. This means that the readers avoid much information, making them less aware. Marylene Wolf, a developmental psychologist, argues that we are what we read as well as how we read it. This means that the text we read from the internet alongside how we read the information makes up how our minds work (Carr, 88). Considering how brief and on point Google provides the information, then internet readers are likely to have shallow minds with sketchy thinking capabilities. Wo...