Is Google Making Us Stupid?

The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" brings up some very substantial points regarding the amount of time people spend on the computer or the Internet today. With this homework assignment for example, we as students are more likely to actually do the assignment because of the fact that it is on the Internet.

There is so much to do on the Internet, it isn't a surprise that so many people are becoming engulfed. It is very rare to walk into a home in America and not see a computer or a laptop somewhere; and more and more people are buying laptops so that they have constant connection.

When you think about it, between facebook, myspace, twitter, skype, google, yahoo, AOL, msn, and all of the other sites on the Internet, a person could stay busy for months on end. The use of the Internet is causing the use of many other things to dwindle. Newspapers and magazines aren't necessary, you can read them online. Books aren't necessary, you can go online and get the main points of the book without ever reading it. You get the point, the Internet is taking over the world.

I know as a student, I rarely use books or magazines when I am researching something for a school assignment. It is so much easier to log on to google and type in what I'm looking for and be given millions of results within seconds rather than spending time searching through a book.

It seems like the Internet could be helpful, but this is where Nicholas Carr's ideas come into play. Carr says that he feels like someone or something has been "tinkering with his brain" because he isn't able to read lengthy books or pieces of literature, and often finds himself becoming bored very easily.

It would be one thing if people were spending their time on the Internet reading entire books or magazines, but that is most definitely not the case. The Internet condenses and sums up the information into as little text as possible, so as to furthermore simplify our lives. Because we are all so used to skimming things on the Internet and getting the short versions, it makes reading a book or a newspaper seem like a waste of time. Why spend an hour reading a newspaper when I can find out the exact same thing in 10 minutes online?

This may be why Carr thinks that Google is making us stupid. I wouldn't say that google itself if making us stupid, but rather the Internet in general. Because we all read the condensed shortened versions online, our minds retrain themselves to think in quick bursts. Rather than actually reading and contemplating, our minds simply skim over things and then interpret them as quickly as possible. Therefore, I think that Carr isn't too far off in his belief that Google is making us stupid.

Despite the fact that Carr's thinking has a lot of truth to it, I find one thing about his article to be incredibly ironic-- his article was posted on an Internet news site! Wouldn't you think that someone who seems to think the Internet is making people stupid would support traditional news sources, rather than supporting the very thing that he thinks is the cause of our stupidity?

Skunk Dreams

The first thought that crossed my mind as I was reading this essay was that it was very confusing. Louise Erdrich jumps around so much with her topics that it I found it very difficult to follow. One minute she is talking about sleeping in the middle of a football field at age fourteen, the next minute she is grown up and talking about how she slept in sketchy motels while she was working in North Dakota.

One of Erdrich's first topics revolves around her night in the football field. She is wondering whether or not skunks or other animals have dreams similar to humans. Can a skunk have a dream about becoming a stock broker? I think not. A skunk would have no idea what a stock broker is; you can't have a dream about something that has never even been introduced to your brain.

The author goes from talking about the dreams of animals to her thoughts on life after death. I think that the connection she was attempting to make between those two points is that she thinks that life after death might possibly feel like she is dreaming. However, I highly doubt that being in either Heaven or Hell feels like a dream.

One of the most puzzling dreams the author describes involves a lot of fenced in area. The fences have barbed wire and sound to be quite desolate. Inside the fences are trees. This might explain why later on in the essay, the Erdrich talks about how she found solace in trees when she was feeling so low and longing for the northeastern horizon. As Erdrich walks farther through the forest and the trees, she comes upon a place that is almost exactly as she had dreamt of it years earlier. She continues to visit this place, with the fenced in animals. However, as she visits the place more often, she realizes that it no longer satisfies her.

Erdrich feels like the animals inside of the fence. She can look at them from afar, but will always be on the outside looking in. Her insatiable desire to watch the animals overcomes her, and one day she goes through the fence into the game field. She walks for hours, and finds no animals. Finally, on her way back home, she stumbles (literally) upon a wild boar. The boar looks at her, and then seems to float away without disturbing anything around it.

To end the essay, Erdrich talks about how if she could be any animal, she would choose to be a skunk. She things that skunks have the utmost freedom; they aren't afraid of being captured, and live a fearless life. I think that there are several things in the author's life that are holding her back and feel as though she is captured and never able to get out. This is why she wishes she were a skunk, so that she could live her life freely and without hesitation.

Talk of the Town

"The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told to ask why," --Adam Gopnik. As the first line of an essay in the New Yorker, it didn't take me long to realize that what I was about to read was going to be a highly controversial topic-- one that is at the top of the priority list these days in America.

In this first line, Gopnik is referring to the shootings at Virginia Tech. He goes on to mention how the shooter had a mental illness, yet was able to buy very powerful guns anyway. Gun control has been a problem in the U.S. for many years now, but it seems to me that it keeps getting worse. I agree with Gopnik in his standpoint that it is insane that someone with a mental illness could easily get ahold of guns whose primary purpose is to kill people.

Many people with mental illnesses can't even get driver's licenses in America, how is it that they can buy guns? There had to have been a severe lack of questioning or inquiry performed by the company selling the guns in order for this to happen. Tightening guns laws doesn't always work, there will always be someone who can figure out a way to get around the law. However, it does make sense to at least try to make it more difficult for civilians to purchase such lethal weapons.

In several different countries, such as Paris, Canada, and Scotland, gun control laws have been increased after deadly shootings. In all of these places, the number of shootings or deaths due to shootings has greatly decreased. This fact alone proves that it would be well worth it for the U.S. to tighten gun control laws in order to protect innocent citizens.

Judging by the comments made by Susan Sontag about the government and the way our country is run, I think it is safe to say that Susan Sontag is very anti-Bush. Sontag mentions that the terrorist attacks on September 11 were not "cowardly attacks on civilization", but rather an attack on the world's "self-proclaimed superpower".

Are we really the superpower? Currently we are at war and are in a major economic recession. I don't know who proclaimed the United States as a superpower, but I think that our days of being a superpower are long gone. Many countries that used to be weak and lacking resources are catching up quickly, and several have probably bypassed us in this area.

The problem is that most people don't realize this. They don't realize it because (as Sontag mentions), the government only tells the people what they want to hear. When you watch the national news at night, you don't hear about all the other countries that are becoming rich or are gaining new intelligence. You hear about the pirates that are ruining Somalia, or anything else that is going wrong with the world.

It may be depressing to hear about what is really going on in the world, and where we really stand. However, I think that it would be beneficial for people to actually know these things, instead of being fed bologna by the politicians. Maybe if someone besides the government knew what was going on in the world, there would be more of an effort to help our country out, so that we actually could be the superpower again.