Analysis of Nicholas Carr's Article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'

Technology has a huge impact on everything. But the impact it has on literacy is even greater. According to Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” summary essay Fredrick Nietzsche was becoming blind but wanted to continue writing so he bought a typewriter, the effect from the switch from paper to a typewriter has changed the way he writes. Literacy used to mean to read and write but over the centuries it has a new meaning from the evolution of technology being used into learning. Modern technology helps enhance literacy through things like education, communication, and overall literacy development but, not limited to those as the impact is constantly increasing.

Modern technology affects literacy in good and bad ways one good way is through the educational system. Teachers tend to use technology in education by allowing students to use computers in class. “Setting the expectation for the use of tablets and computers is often all that is needed for management, as students tend to be comfortable exploring technology and using problem solving skills to figure out on their own how things work”. Technology can help prepare students for the world that we live in now that is technologically complex. “Learners today routinely use technology outside of school to communicate, collaborate, and gather information about the world around them”. Technology can be helpful for us but technology in classrooms can also be misused by students playing video games or watching videos that are not educational. The second educational way technology helps is by giving us ways to learn other languages to communicate with other cultures. Using digital media in classrooms helps grasp information better. Another negative effect technology has on us is us relying on the autocorrect to fix our grammar mistakes when we type instead of actually understanding and knowing how to spell or punctuate correctly. We also tend to use abbreviations when text messaging each other causing us to forget that those abbreviations are longer words and that it is making us lazy. Therefore, technology has multiple effects on us and our society.

'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' Analysis Essay

Technology has provided a new kind of literacy for us in today’s society. We used to write letters or had to call on a push-button phone to communicate back and forth with one another. Now we use emails or short text messages to communicate with other individuals rather than leaving a message on the answering machine or writing a letter. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” “Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter, but the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of his friends noticed the change in his style of writing”. Also, books have transformed from paper to a digital format. “Students who currently sit in our classrooms will most likely become adults who are accustomed to reading books in a digital format”. Modern technology played a big role in the change of communicative literacy by allowing people all across the world to communicate with one another through new technology like cell phones and computers. In “Coding the New Literacy” “Twelve million people have watched a video to learn how to code”. Technology has also given us a new way of problem- solving by looking up a video or reading instructions online such as how to change a tire on your car or how to write an essay step by step. The modern technology has also provided for younger children decoding which is websites or apps and e-readings to help with literacy comprehension. Change of literacy is yet another effect of modern technology, but another would be how technology has made our society even more literate.

Most people believe that modern technology has caused our society to become illiterate, but it has broadened our literacy. “Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the internet, not to mention the popularity of text messaging on cell phones, we may be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s when television was the medium choice”. It has made us more literate throughout the years because we now have access to many digital books rather than going to the library and only being able to check out one book at a time, but we also have access to shorten versions of books. Giving us time to read multiple books in a short period of time with just a click of a button in a matter of minutes. In the 80s people were only able to gather information through books and newspaper but now we have the internet to give us more access to information. Internet-based life, online journals, and messages have tremendously improved how we write. Texts, blogs, emails, and Facebook posts are tainting different sorts of composing, what’s more, generally for the great. Email commenced a remarkable development recorded as a hard copy. We’re presently in the most proficient age ever. We are constantly enhancing in reading and writing due to the spread of digital platforms and digital devices giving us more to read. For instance, the news we used to have to watch the news but now we can read about articles over the news. Not to mention now that we can blog the more students take the writing more important because the audience can respond to what they have to write. Writing online allows students to have access to different types of audiences to write to giving them an understanding of various ways to communicate through writing.

Having access to the internet within a fingertip has possibly caused this society to not think as deeply in thought as we used to. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr essay he mentions how hard it for him to focus on reading long pieces of writing from the use of the web and when he mentions it to his friends that he has these troubles his friends tend to agree with him. That is now causing problems with our deep process of thinking. Compared with paper, screens likewise deplete a great number of our physiological assets while pursuing and making it somewhat harder for us to recall what we just read when we finish reading. “Many types of affordances of electronic technologies, including the computer and it’s an evolution into online contexts and the many and varied new kinds of software and hardware, are affecting the processes and products of cultures, creativity, and literacy and our concept of writing space”. There will always be negative and positive effects technology has on literacy and the more we evolve in technology the more complex but simpler reading and writing will come.

In conclusion to 'Is google making us stupid?' essay summary, technology has given us a new definition of literacy compared to how we defined it back then. It also provides a new kind of way to educate younger kids by allowing them the use of decoding. Giving us new kinds of literacy through email, blogs, and computers rather than letters and push phones. Modern technology provides many new ways for our society to be more literate by the use of computers and cell phones, we are able to access many websites that have tons of books and are able to read more books in a shorter period of time given we can access shorter versions.