Today it is possible to get a college degree never cracking open a book or even putting pen to paper! Creativity is now a matter of cutting and pasting text from Google searches and other sources into Word templates. If Shakespeare had used M$ Word and spell check, would his works have been as quirky and compelling? How about Mark Twain? He worked as a typesetter before he was a writer. Read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: he crafted words and sentence like sculptures INSIDE his mind BEFORE he ever put it onto paper! That’s genius! Maybe Google hasn’t made us stupid. Maybe technology has moved creativity out of the cerebral cortex down to the part of our brains that controls our fingers! Does anyone have the patients to write a work out on paper having thought it through first?
grizzly marmot
The editors cut you a big break. Clearly the title should have been – “Google is making me stupid”.
Quite frankly Google is making me smarter but it is also turning me into an a#*hole.
Jim Mason
May sound counter-intuitive but I think we’re losing our curiosity as a result. We quickly find a depth below which we don’t want to go and rush to other more appealing surfaces.
But what can we do? As Oscar Wilde said – “I can resist everything except temptation.”
Feather
Nick, where is your self control and independence? Are you trying to convince people the Internet took your brains away or exposing the denial in having locked yourself into a habit which is dictating your life? Right now youre sounding more like an old AA man at the bar preaching the evils of booze while downing a pint.
May I suggest a bit of scrutinization on your part?
There is nothing wrong with Google. There is something wrong with the perception that everything important about a particular subject is indexed by it. There is a hidden world of information that is not retuned from Google searches – missing that is making us less informed. That may change if their initiate to digitalize all the books of the world succeeds.
Nick Carr
Right now youre sounding more like an old AA man at the bar preaching the evils of booze while downing a pint.
Are you suggesting that the best course would be for us all to become Internet tea-totalers? Good luck with that, my friend.
That may change if their initiate to digitalize all the books of the world succeeds..
Reconstituting books as searchable web pages makes life a lot easier for researchers (as I can happily testify) but I don’t see how it does anything to promote deep reading. I would think it would have the opposite effect, in fact.
I don’t find it any harder to read long articles than I ever did. There are lots of techniques to calm your mind and keep it from flitting about: limiting usage with timers, standing up while browsing (with laptop), putting the laptop away in a drawer when you’re not using it …
Sorry to hear you’ve been losing your attention span.
Today it is possible to get a college degree never cracking open a book or even putting pen to paper! Creativity is now a matter of cutting and pasting text from Google searches and other sources into Word templates. If Shakespeare had used M$ Word and spell check, would his works have been as quirky and compelling? How about Mark Twain? He worked as a typesetter before he was a writer. Read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: he crafted words and sentence like sculptures INSIDE his mind BEFORE he ever put it onto paper! That’s genius! Maybe Google hasn’t made us stupid. Maybe technology has moved creativity out of the cerebral cortex down to the part of our brains that controls our fingers! Does anyone have the patients to write a work out on paper having thought it through first?
The editors cut you a big break. Clearly the title should have been – “Google is making me stupid”.
Quite frankly Google is making me smarter but it is also turning me into an a#*hole.
May sound counter-intuitive but I think we’re losing our curiosity as a result. We quickly find a depth below which we don’t want to go and rush to other more appealing surfaces.
But what can we do? As Oscar Wilde said – “I can resist everything except temptation.”
Nick, where is your self control and independence? Are you trying to convince people the Internet took your brains away or exposing the denial in having locked yourself into a habit which is dictating your life? Right now youre sounding more like an old AA man at the bar preaching the evils of booze while downing a pint.
May I suggest a bit of scrutinization on your part?
There is nothing wrong with Google. There is something wrong with the perception that everything important about a particular subject is indexed by it. There is a hidden world of information that is not retuned from Google searches – missing that is making us less informed. That may change if their initiate to digitalize all the books of the world succeeds.
Right now youre sounding more like an old AA man at the bar preaching the evils of booze while downing a pint.
Are you suggesting that the best course would be for us all to become Internet tea-totalers? Good luck with that, my friend.
That may change if their initiate to digitalize all the books of the world succeeds..
Reconstituting books as searchable web pages makes life a lot easier for researchers (as I can happily testify) but I don’t see how it does anything to promote deep reading. I would think it would have the opposite effect, in fact.
I don’t find it any harder to read long articles than I ever did. There are lots of techniques to calm your mind and keep it from flitting about: limiting usage with timers, standing up while browsing (with laptop), putting the laptop away in a drawer when you’re not using it …
Sorry to hear you’ve been losing your attention span.