Rhetorical Analysis “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr

Ever imagined a world without Google? Have you ever asked yourself how our grandparents managed studies without Google? How did they go about reading the long the long texts letter by letter without the option of skimming through them? Were there other reading techniques that were almost equivalent to Google in efficiency and speed that have since become extinct and that we might run to should we wake up one day and realize that Google was just but a dream in our long sleep that was too good to be true? Will we manage to pin down the two- sentenced killer point in a journal with a thousand pages. How I wish I could shout ‘YES' but am afraid those brains are almost extinct in the world we live in. Nicholas Carr narrates his disappointment in Google in his article,† Is Google Making Us Stupid?† According to him, our minds have evolved to quick and easy skimming in search of information. He talks of how students used to read long texts without skimming. He mentions how one would concentrate and keep focus for long hours with their minds totally lost in the reading, unlike today. Carr recalls how he used to easily immerse himself in books and lengthy articles and would spend hours going through them with his mind caught up in the long prose and would or narratives. He compares this to his current state of mind where his concentration drifts away after just the first few pages of the prose before he starts considering to switch to other duties most of which would come second in his priority list back in the old days.His love for long reading hours has turned into torture to him. He compares the two reading habits and concludes that his way of thinking has changed over the years with reading especially through long stretches of prose moving down his priority list. To show that he is not the only one undergoing the reading evolution, he brings out other writers and bloggers including Scott Karp who share in his ordeal and from all of them its evident that the human mind and the use of the internet are correlated in that the functionality of the human mind can be transformed thus losing some features and gaining new ones when exposed to different environments, e.g. the internet for longer hours. The internet has made them all prefer to go for the easier option of skimming through the reading materials topics and parts of the body instead of trying to focus and concentrate on the whole content to get the information in details as it used to be. Most readers thus end up reading less. Carr explains the findings of research and experiments done on the human brain and the use of the Internet. He describes how the connections in the neurone system of the brain can be manipulated from its initial form to a completely new form. The conclusions are that when an individual uses the Internet for long, his/her neurocircuits can be manipulated and reconnected thus reducing their capacity to read like before, i.e. by contemplating and concentrating for long hours, which practically makes us stupid. In one of the research, the findings by the British Library, a team of UK educational consortium and university college London Scholars, the evidence as experienced by Nicholas Carr, writers and bloggers Scott Karp included, it proven that persons' capacity to read for long hours, contemplating and concentrating has been by far by the use of internet. They opt to skim through texts and headlines, which are unlike their traditional reading style where they would focus, concentrate and read for long hours deeply glued on the long proses going through word after word. In the article, he describes how the brain can switch forms from the old connections to a completely new form that's losing its original form. Nicholas says that he has had a feeling of someone or something reconfiguring his brain and transforming it into something else that he cant literally describe. He feels that due to long exposure to a different environment, his brain has been disconnected from its older connections and that through the Internet his brain is being corrupted in that he is now seeing things very differently. The Internet works in such a manner that it generates more profits form the user. As we surf, we tend to visit different sites that mostly create Internet traffic. In some instances, advertisement links normally pop-up while surfing. These sites are normally intended to market some businesses, and they act as distractors that encourage slow reading. When the mind is programmed to slow destructions, we end up not surfing for the intended issues. For instance, when a person uses the Internet to perform given research, he or she may end up with poor findings due to the distraction of the mind. Therefore, Internet users must learn how to evade the advertisement sites in a bid to maximize on the limited time. Nicholas Carr asserts that a majority of the advertisements have a financial obligation of collecting our data as we visit the business links. In this light, they normally reap heavily the more we click on the unwanted sites. Human beings have become highly dependent on the Internet to the extent that they browse even the obvious things. For instance, a person may even decide to surf for the reasons as to why children must obey their parents. This is a subject that is common to every person and should come naturally instead of browsing to get more information. The Internet indeed makes up stupid since most of the people spend much time thus reducing the concentration of the mind. The mind is then triggered in such a way that it will solely depend on the Intern even when serving for the obvious issues. In summary, I think that people need to use Google when it is only necessary and start doing traditional research. This aspect will indeed result in the development of sharp minds that can also become innovative.