Is it just me, or are these readings getting longer?! Upon beginning to read this article by Nicholas Carr, I thought this was going to be an article all about Google and how they're almost controlling the Internet and must be stopped. But as I read on, I began to agree with the points the author was making. The Internet is making us dumber! Instead of us reading an entire book on a topic we want to know more about, we run to our computers and type it in on Google, Yahoo!, or Ask. And the information we get from links on this website may not even be from a referable source. Anyone can post anything on the Internet. Even Wikipedia, even though it looks like the articles are written by professionals, can be updated by anyone with an account.
Newspapers and channels like CNN, BBC, and FOX News have their own websites, but even the articles on those sites are super-short tidbits on the latest stories. For example, I wanted to research the recent standoff that happened on Broadhead Street in McFarland the night I heard about it on the news. So I logged on to my computer and went to all three local news channel websites: WKOW 27, NBC 15 and Channel 3000, but they all three had the same amount of information about the standoff. But I then read about it in the State Journal the next day, and I found out a ton more information about what happened in the newspaper than I did online. Things like this is what proves Carr's point. The articles online just don't give enough information about a topic, even on legitimate sources of information.
But Google is not to blame for the transformation of our minds from a deep, rich piece of fruit into a thin, spread out "pancake", as Carr puts it. It is just one fish, although quite big, in a giant ocean that is the Internet. Google is just a company that has capitalized on the chance to compile all of the information on the Internet onto one site. It's what encyclopedias do with information in the written world. Both of them do the same thing: they take all of the known facts (or keywords, in the case of Google) on a topic and put them together into one piece of work, a book for an encyclopedia and a website for Google. Google is like an offspring of the Internet. If the Internet didn't exist, then Google wouldn't exist. Period. We created this monster that is Google Corp. You really cannot blame the creators of the website for capitalizing on such an opportunity. I mean, who wouldn't! Wouldn't you, if you could become a multi-billionaire because of it? Imagine how rich the creators of encyclopedia like World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica became after they were created?
Lastly, Carr's writing style. He used a lot of words unknown to me, which means his writing ability is definitely at a high level, as I read at an above-average level. I thought the introduction fit in perfectly with the entire point of the article, saying at the end how computers are going to become like the supercomputer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, being directly linked to our thoughts and feelings and responding as such. The writing flows quite well, and Carr really uses a variety of sentence lengths to keep the reader from losing interest in his essay. He also doesn't keep emphasizing a certain point, but has many points to argue his side of the issue. Also, Carr uses examples and evidence from other works to back up the points in his arguments. I give this paper high regards in terms of its message and writing style, and, despite it's length, it has been my favorite reading out of the three summer essays I have read thus far.
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