Blog Entry 4.3 CAT Practice # 6

  In the article “Is Google making us stupid?” the author Nicholas Carr talks about the famous search engine, Google. He says that Google is a useful search engine that allows us to get information quickly. He also mentions that Google and computers overall cannot only provide you with information but can cause distraction. One of the most significant ideas from the article was that the author Nicholas Carr said that what makes a person intelligent is not the ability to find information quickly but the ability to think deeply about the information. I agree with this, if we can’t develop our own thoughts without the help of the internet that means that we would depend on the internet for the rest of out lives in order to obtain information. Therefore I believe that the internet is bad in some ways because it can cause us not to learn on our own, lose concentration and interrupt our ability to think about the information.

   People are not able to think on their own because depend on search engines like Google too much and therefore we are not able to learn. Yes, the internet can b every useful but it can also be bad. According to the author, he says “so even as Google is giving us all that useful information, it’s also encouraging us to think superficially”. I can relate to this because I remember in my psychology class, my teacher used to give us research papers and the only way I used to find my information was throughout the internet. It was very helpful but I felt as it was not helping me gain more knowledge about the subject because I didn’t know if the information was accurate. Even thought I thought it was useful I knew that I was not learning on my own because I would skim through the information and rephrase it and not even understand what I was reading. And now I look back and say that internet was encouraging me to think superficially instead of my own.

     Another reason why people are not able to think on their own is because they are distracted with the internet. According to the article “if we’re distracted we understand less, remember less and learn less.”I can honestly say that I am guilty of this because when I’m distracted I lose my train of thoughts and sometimes even forget what’s been said. When I was in my computer class, I would sometimes go on the internet and get distracted. Instead of listen and typing notes from the teachers lecture, I would go on AIM and start chatting with my friends and even Google stuff to keep me entertain. I felt tempted to use the internet and it was an interruption of my learning because I wasn’t able to concentrate. I was not able to develop my thoughts because I wasn’t able to remember what was being taught. And because of that I wasn’t able to think deeply.

       Finally, if we depend on the internet for the rest of our lives, we would not be able to think deeply about any subject. If we are able to concentrate, then we won’t remember or learn anything. If we are able to use other sources to help us get information and actually think about the information, this would actually help us understand better and learn more. And like the author says “the greater our concentration, the richer our thoughts are".