Search Engines: Helpful or Not?

Reading Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” was both enlightening and terrifying. In it Carr discusses how the use of the internet, specifically internet search engines is changing not only the way that we read different types of writings, but could even be changing the way that we think. While most people just consider how the internet is benefiting us, Carr is taking the flip side of it, and showing what ways that using the internet could be negatively affecting our lives. He mostly focuses on how using search engines has limited our focus and attention to only snippets of information. Because of search engines we are allowed to flit about on the internet following hyperlinks and only reading the basic information. Carr discusses how this is limiting our ability to read in depth and actually contemplate about what we’re reading.

In this article, Carr does make some interesting points. As I read this article, I realized how few books I read now. Reading the article also made me realize the irony that Nicholas Carr was employing in writing this article. He wrote an article that took up eight pages on a Microsoft Word document about how people can no longer read for extended amounts of time. That made me wonder who this article was actually aimed at. Because if he was trying to direct this to people who don’t read anymore and who can only skim pages because of using internet search engines then according to him they wouldn’t even be able to read it. Also according to him, to the people that don’t use the internet that much, who would actually be able to read this article, this would only be reconfirming a belief that they probably already have. Just a thought I had while reading.

While Carr does make the interesting point that people are not reading as much as they used to or as in depth, I don’t think that search engines are only being used for shallow reasons. People today still use search engines for in depth searching. Looking at our internet logs and the blogs based on those, many of us use search engines to find news articles. And while I’m sure not everyone reads the entire article, I know that I usually do. I also do not think that we are mindless drones following hyperlink after hyperlink. We do not spend time just staring at the computer taking in useless bits of information just because it is there. We still think when using the internet and contemplate what is read, whether it’s the validity of a source or the opinion of an author. To say that humans may be turning more machinelike than the machines themselves is a scary and slightly insulting notion. But I do not see that in our future.