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Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008) - The Diigo Meta page

www.theatlantic.com/...google - Cached - Annotated View

Public Stiky Notes

  • stormagnet
    stormagnet on 2009-10-11
    I love it when people blame technology for their bad habits.
  • ahammel
    Al Hammel on 2009-04-21
    I am using this page as a discussion topic for my debate students. Google Scholar has helped correct some "easy way out" mentalities in my class, and Diigo, too, is supporting scholarly discussions in class.
  • oline73
    George Haines on 2009-03-05
    re: long article-- how many people had trouble staying focused while they read? anyone stop to check e-mail in the middle? or update facebook? I think that sort of proves his point.
  • greasefire11
    Dan Myers on 2009-02-04
    Dave beat me to the irony of the long article!
  • r4ph4el
    Raphael Rousseau on 2009-01-12
    @dave He didn't say he read his own article... ;-)
  • dcyuhas
    Dave Yuhas on 2008-08-01
    There's some irony here. The author describes the inability to read books or long articles IN A LONG ARTICLE.
  • korinuo
    Interesting: Who is our internet patrol online? Google? Facebook? Peers? What do you think?
  • marchs
    march j on 2008-07-18
    nice. first site outside diigo i found a sticky note on :-D
  • lawfully
    a77ila on 2008-06-18
    power or lack of it of abstraction
  • honormoorman
    Honor Moorman on 2009-10-24
    I agree with this sentiment
  • phdumper
    Chris Andrews on 2009-10-04
    Likening hyperlinks to footnotes is problematic at best; hyperlinks (hypertext) changes the nature of a text and asks us to change what we believe a text "ought" to be.
  • oline73
    George Haines on 2009-06-02
    So true!
  • isabellep
    IsabelleP on 2009-10-10
    Print, TV, and digital media do shape our collective thinking process (think elections!). What the Internet does to a much greater extent is connect people with the opinion they want to hear. THe shades of what truth is are very much gray: it's in the eye of the beholder. On the flip side, the Internet also connects people with information and experts about what they are motivated to learn. It's the ultimate personnalized learning for kids! Good or bad...
  • jtkatavich
    J.T. Katavich on 2009-09-14
    No one owns the media, the media has become a channel for any person to make what they want of it.
  • angelw
    yunju wang on 2009-09-09
    um..I think that leads to the question---who owns the media.
  • jimbeau
    Jim Kleinhenz on 2008-09-30
    This contention needs more than pointing to. It needs to be established as true.
  • tomkrieglstein
    Tom Krieglstein on 2009-07-13
    @Allison - thanks for the link to this as I throughly enjoyed his reponse!
  • akipta
    Allison Kipta on 2008-06-21
  • gummby
    Jordan Gumm on 2009-08-31
    Well, this isn't an argument for or against the webs ability to shape or contribute to the growth of an intellectual. However, I do agree that my focus hasn't been noticeably affected. If anything, I only have just become more aware of the things that truly do and do not intrigue me. I run across passages on the web every day in which I lose focus rather easily. Except, I have also found e-books and other passages online that I tear right through.
  • markkcurtis
    Mark K Curtis on 2009-04-24
    I do not agree with this sentiment one bit. I have become so much MORE focussed on longer pieces of writing since viewing them online. Particularly now that tools such as Diigo and Digg exist. These tools make a long (and sometimes unsubstantiated, as we can see here) piece of writing a lot easier to consume. And so what if I graze through the information meadow? At least then I take it on - I'm just not the type of person that can read reams and reams in one go. But I can bet anyone that I'm more intelligent since the advent of Google and the like than I would have been without - having to rely on my lacking library services.
  • akipta
    Allison Kipta on 2008-06-21
    The more I read Nicholas Carr, the more I have to fight to stay focused on Nicholas Carr.
  • demetri
    Demetri Orlando on 2008-06-20
    Is this true for you? I don't think I've lost the ability to focus in depth, I think I've gained the ability to access a whole lot more information.
  • jarceo
    Jennifer Arceo on 2009-02-11
    yes.
    if we read well we learn well...
  • jimbeau
    Jim Kleinhenz on 2008-09-30
    This seems an important point.
  • jimbeau
    Jim Kleinhenz on 2008-09-30
    Reading on the Internet is not as different as reading Chinese--and I'd like to see those experiments. My thought is that one might find that individual differences in 'wiring' inside a culture might be greater than the differences across two cultures. And 'wiring' is a metaphor, is it not?
  • korinuo
    A good reference is: Penskys article on Digital Natives and Digital Inmigrants, look it up in any schorlarly database.
  • rafaribas
    Rafael Ribas on 2008-06-14
    How does this affect the way we teach?
  • cheryl_vt
    Cheryl van Tilburg on 2009-09-29
    Very interesting insight. It reminds me that a lot of what we're talking about is cultural. Thanks, Asako.
  • akochan
    Asako Yoshida on 2008-06-25
    In Japan, clock time did not belong to individuals, so how the sense of clock time is adapted in a society very much depends on the existing social relations, etc. For example, in an office situation, even it's 6 pm which signals the end of working time, you have to read the environment who is leaving and who is still there to judge your timing for leaving the office. Re: Present and Past article "Japan Time."
  • dcyuhas
    Dave Yuhas on 2008-08-01
    In the approx 2 years that I've been using diigo, this is the first annotated article I've encountered. Unless there's a tidal wave of new diigo users (highly unlikely) diigo will be just another failed experiment.
  • mnixonbv
    Michelle N on 2008-07-19
    Still trying to figure out the sticky note thing. I agree it was nice to find Diigo annotations outside of Diigo.
  • sbowers
    Seth Bowers on 2009-07-28
    Turing had a huge role in winning WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_turing
  • pjhiggins
    Patrick Higgins on 2008-06-21
    This shows me that new skills are necessary, or in the least, old ones need to be reconstituted. What jobs or tasks become prioritized? Can we not turn off all of our notifiers and our distractors while we indeed focus on what needs to be done? These are skills, not just simple behaviors.
  • rafaribas
    Rafael Ribas on 2008-06-14
    Great discussion topic...
  • traveller2008
    Lisa Stornes on 2009-02-25
    Such as traditional encyclopedias trying to compete with wikipedia by letting user contribute to content
  • mnixonbv
    Michelle N on 2008-07-19
    Is this what we've all become? Is this our future as we skim and scan for information and move along before reaching the end of an article or book?
  • jasonhbuck
    jason buck on 2009-10-28
    This is one of the scariest thoughts in the entire article. When the system become first and foremost people will loose the ability to think and reason for themselves. They will look to the system to think for them.
  • akochan
    Asako Yoshida on 2008-06-25
    It also freed us from taylorism thinking at where we are???
  • blumey
    Jon Blumenthal on 2009-10-14
    It's ironic that people shred their private data, guard their ss#, but don't think twice about their browsing history. And it doesn't matter if google know it's *you* (and they usually do). You're giving away the secrets they want. They can commidify your actions, and you can't collect directly. But they'll digitize the entire print world for you.
  • joerobguy
    Joseph Guyer on 2009-09-19
    Facebook has been very successful combating this. Google can't get into Facebook accounts, so everyone's comments, pictures, etc. are not being used for commerce.
  • margolis
    Margolis Margolis on 2008-08-08
    This might be the really substential argument here. The economic incentive for making our attention span shorter.
  • rsoldring
    RIck Stiles-Oldring on 2009-05-25
    Also see:
    Dan Colman's "In Bed With the Word" - improtance of reading
    James Harken - "Lost in Cyburbia" - history and description of "Network"
  • cheryl_vt
    Cheryl van Tilburg on 2009-09-28
    I think it's the concept that "something's gotta give." It's tough to be expert in both the Canon AND the information that's available on the internet. There are only so many hours in a day...
  • jimbeau
    Jim Kleinhenz on 2008-10-01
    Yes, this is the ideal--but is there really anything about the Internet that hinders this?
  • rubyrubyruby
    Ruben Van Havermaet on 2008-07-21
    For those who still read books, this reminds me somewhat of Jean Baudrillard's 'The Ecstasy of Communication':
    "Obscenity begins when there's no more spectacle, no more stage, no more theatre, no more illusions, when everything becomes immediately transparant, visible, exposed in the raw and inexorable light of information and communication. We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication."

Page Comments

  • mnixonbv
    Michelle N on 2008-07-19
    Very true I think. Americans especially have turned to the clock for everything. We eat according to time of day not our bodies need for nourishment.
  • giggyg
    Gina Maranto on 2008-07-23
    Carr isn't alone in making this argument. Bauerlein has a whole book about the subject:
    http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,3980465.story
    The question is: how many people ever willingly "read deeply" and how many read "serious literature." Carr's anecdotal victims of internet dumbing down are not convincing. In fact, I read this whole (very long) article online. And as other respondents say, skimming predates the internet, and being able to access more raw information, rather than waiting for the media moguls to decide for us (I'm a journalist myself, btw),has the potential to make us collectivelysmarter, not the other way around. Not to mention more empowered, in an assortment of ways, viz. Denis Diderot's original encyclopedia.
  • kiberens
    kiberens on 2008-09-18
    Isn't this a gross overstatement? Alarmist b/c not even taking into account readers of his own thoughtful blog and the hundreds of others like it.
  • maxsenges
    max senges on 2008-09-20
    there is some interesting thinking going on the context of a Rights based approach to internet governance - http://www.internet-bill-of-rights.org/
  • bodhi367
    connor plaga on 2008-10-13
    I think it depends how the web is used. If somone surfs and hops through sites, link after link, then they are hurting their literacy. But the internet is a tool that can be utilized to find bountiful information quickly, and I believe that it can be focused on.
  • jimmy87
    J Arturo Blanco García on 2009-09-02
    This is a really good reason to avoid texting all you do in the day... how come all keep doing it... is it interesting to text everything?

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