In an influential essay in The Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr asks: “Is
Google making us stupid?” Carr, a chronic distractee like the rest of us,
noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in
a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has
become a struggle.”
Instead he now Googles his way though life, scanning and skimming, not pausing
to think, to absorb. He feels himself being hollowed out by “the replacement
of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the
pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly
available’”.
