Carr- "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Carr is intrigued by how his and many of his friend's attention spans have shortened with the access to the Internet, mainly Google. Once in his life he could sit and read or write for hours with no issue of concentration, but now he has gotten to a problem. He can not concentrate on much of anything for too long because he is used to being able to just search everything on the Internet. Socrates found a similar situation with the written language. Once that was created no one really had to remember what they knew. People would think they were wise, when really all they needed to do was know how to read. Now the same is happening with the Internet, no one needs to read books or go out and experience things to learn because they can just Google it! People can just skim articles and jump to the next one in seconds. Their minds have been trained to grab important facts and then move on as quickly as possible. Has Google ruined people's want to read or experience things? Google does spread knowledge, just as the written language did, but not without a sacrifice.

The Internet is beneficial in the need of a quick answer but the problem is that now barely anyone can stand to read a full book, listen to a full song and so on. Why do you think the hit songs are getting shorter? Most people can not stand to listen to songs more than 2-3 minutes. This is especially true for people who grew up with access to the Internet. This issue will only be getting worse but there is nothing that can be done since the Internet allows people around teh world to reach information quickly, quickly being a key word. The faster it is, the less we have to work for it, the lazier we become. This begs the question, are the people that grew up using the Internet losing their want to experience real things? Like Whitman said, the best way of learning is experience, but since they can find out everything they need to know on the Internet, what is the point of having to get up, go out and physically experience something. With an increasingly lazier people, it is frightening to think that one day we might generate into the people from Wall-e, fat, lazy people that never have the motivation to get up and read or experience. I am all for the Internet, it is just scary at what it may cause people to turn into.

What will be the next technological endeavor that will transform the way humans accept knowledge?