by Benjamin Ogilvie for the University of Minnesota First-Year Writing Program

under the Department of Writing Studies

The Brain In My Pocket: A Critical Textual Analysis of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by

Nicholas Carr

When I first read the title of Nicholas Carr's article in The Atlantic magazine, "Is Google

Making Us Stupid?," I had no intention of being convinced. In his article, Carr argues that

modern Internet usage habits cause a loss of attention span, changing an individual's thought

patterns and diminishing intelligence and culture. This type of argument is not new to me; very

frequently, I am presented with the message that some factor in my immediate environment

(such as sleep deprivation, environmental pollution, or food additives) will gradually destroy my

health. Over time, I have learned to regard most of these messages as exaggerated and

misguided. In particular, as a frequent Google user, I was initially resistant to the idea that

Internet browsing could be harmful to me. After reading Carr's article, however, I feel

differently; Carr's unique perspective on technology makes his argument very convincing. Carr

is an avid outdoorsman from small-town Connecticut, and his writing reveals that he values

contemplation, yet Carr has spent most of his career editing and writing articles about technology

and business. On top of it all, Carr has a master's degree in English literature from Harvard

(Cooper). In order to make his argument convincing, Carr uses a combination of a strong

emotional appeal, marked by figurative language in a style typical of literary writing, and appeals

to logic and credibility typical of arguments in business and technology publications. As well,

Carr considers several counterarguments and structures his article in a way that accommodates

resistant readers like myself.

Speaking of readers like myself, Carr seems to have structured the beginning of his

article with his audience in mind. Carr's audience consists of readers of The Atlantic. The

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Atlantic mainly focuses on economic issues, political issues, and culture. Hence, it can be

inferred that Carr's audience mostly consists of well-educated, culturally aware people who are

interested in technology and social science. His introductory paragraph suits them well. Carr

begins his article with a reference to a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey where the main

character slowly unplugs the brain of HAL, the artificial intelligence piloting his spacecraft.

Besides merely serving as an introductory hook, this scene serves as a good starting point for the

anecdote Carr shares in the second paragraph. There, Carr describes how he feels as if

"something has been tinkering with [his] brain." More specifically, Carr states how he used to

"spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose," yet now he "get[s] fidgety" and "feel[s]

as if [he is] always dragging [his] wayward brain back to the text" (731). Carr's use of verbs

such as 'think' and 'feel' alongside phrases such as "immersing myself in a book" and "dragging

my wayward brain" lends the text an introspective, contemplative quality. While Carr does seem

somewhat concerned about the recent changes in his thought processes, Carr does not adopt an

alarmed tone, nor does Carr delve into a logical argument right away. This prevents Carr from

alienating readers who disagree with his ideas and sets Carr's article apart from most distressing

magazine articles about health, which tend to cite recent scientific research and use a dire,

desperate tone. Instead, by describing with sincerity how his own thought patterns have been

shaped by Internet influence, Carr seems to suggest that the thoughts of the reader (and the

thoughts of the Internet-using public) have also been affected in similar ways.

Shortly after relating his anecdote, Carr makes an appeal to credibility by discussing how

he has greatly benefitted from the Internet as a writer, and how he often finds himself "foraging

in the web's info-thickets" for recreation. Carr also describes using the U.S. to find whatever

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"telltale fact or pithy quote" comes to mind (732). By describing some of the subtle details of his

own Internet usage habits, Carr appeals to credibility by showing his audience that he is not

merely a philosopher in a vacuum or an out-of-date opponent of technological change, but rather

an experienced Internet user himself, personally knowledgeable about his subject matter. Carr

also presents himself as similar to the average Internet user, building common ground with his

audience and reinforcing his credibility further. As well, by discussing both his Internet usage

habits and his dwindling attention span, Carr presents himself as a sufferer of the very problems

he laments. Through this approach, Carr distances himself further from the average health-

related news article by deliberately avoiding a condescending stance towards his audience. By

adopting a contemplative, objective stance instead, Carr suggests that his viewpoint is unbiased,

making it credible.

After introducing his argument and showing that the Internet does affect human thought,

Carr explores how the Internet influences culture. In so doing, Carr makes an appeal to emotion.

Carr begins this appeal by describing how the Internet changes other forms of media, explaining

that the Internet "injects" a medium's content with "hyperlinks, blinking adds, and other digital

gewgaws," forcing Internet users to "scatter their attention and diffuse their concentration" (738).

Carr's use of strong, jarring words such as "injects" and "digital gewgaws" suggests that the

Internet is disrupting the traditionally quiet and thoughtful experience of viewing or listening to

media, resulting in a shallower, inferior experience overall. Accordingly, the mood of Carr's

writing seems to shift from contemplative to deeply concerned in this section, matching the

appeal Carr is trying to make. Later, Carr describes how the "crazy quilt of Internet media"

induces print newspapers and magazines to "introduce capsule summaries" and "crowd their

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pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets" (738). Carr's use of words such as "summaries", "easy-

to-browse", and "info-snippet" implies print publications as becoming less substantial as a result

of Internet influence, causing society to lose something valuable. Carr also seems to imply that

this disruption will continue until Western media is completely ruined, a slippery slope fallacy

that strikes the audience as undesirable and deeply unsettling. Through a vivid emotional appeal,

replete with colorful vocabulary, Carr seems to propose that the profundity of Western media is

being replaced by a crazy, Internet-style shallowness, much to the detriment of Western culture.

As Carr continues with his emotional appeal, Carr's argument grows increasingly

abstract. Eventually, Carr discusses the unsettling idea that Google might at some future time

develop technology that "supplement[s], or even replace[s] [the human brain with] artificial

intelligence" (742). By doing this, Carr enters a larger conversation about the possibility of

artificial intelligence and its effect on humanity, one that has been discussed through science

fiction novels for many years. Much has been written and said about artificial intelligence, and

Carr does not attempt to discuss it here in full, but Carr does mention that, from the perspective

of Google, "there's little place for the fuzziness of contemplation" and "ambiguity is not an

opening for insight but a bug to be fixed" (742). That struck me as curious because, in my view,

contemplation and ambiguity are two fundamental cornerstones of understanding. In my

opinion, Carr's fundamental insight is this: as Internet influences reshape and reprogram people's

thought patterns, human thought will grow less profound, and the foundations of human

intelligence will weaken. Google really will make us stupid. Of the many unsettling arguments

Carr makes in his article, that is perhaps the most unsettling one of all

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 Works Cited

Cooper, Arnie. "Computing the Cost." The Sun Magazine, Mar. 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic, 2008. Print.

(Note: Page numbers cited in article reflect the page numbers of the Norton textbook, not the

Atlantic magazine.)

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Appendix: Summary of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr

In his article "Is Google Making us Stupid," Nicholas Carr argues overall that Google and

the Internet are causing members of Western society to lose their attention span and their ability

to think deeply about long pieces of text. Carr begins by quoting a scene from 2001: A Space

Odyssey where Dave, an astronaut, unplugs the brain of HAL, a computer that operates his

spacecraft. From there, Carr describes how he feels like his thought patterns have changed, and

how he is no longer able to maintain focus on a long article or book. Carr also talks about his

own internet experience and his own internet usage habits, explaining how the internet has

helped him greatly and how he often has to scan through the Internet to do research for his

writing. As well, Carr shares some quotes and anecdotes from writers about how they now

struggle to maintain concentration on long works of literature that they used to be able to read

easily. Carr also cites and describes a couple of British studies showing that most individuals

who used a British online database for research only skimmed articles and did not take time to

read them. From there, Carr argues that human thought is a product of not only reading content,

but also the manner in which one reads. To prove this, Carr cites research showing that readers

of ideograms process text differently than readers of alphabetic characters. Carr seems to imply

that readers who learn to skim over text Internet-style process text differently than readers who

read more thoughtfully. Carr also cites the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as an

example and describes how, when Nietzsche started using a typewriter to write letters, his

writing style changed. Carr also describes how the Internet has influenced other media forms

(such as magazines and newspapers) to become shallower. As well, Carr moves on to discuss

how the technological changes of the industrial revolution gave birth to the philosophy of

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Taylorism, which values maximum efficiency at the expense of human creativity. Carr then

describes Google as applying the philosophy of Taylorism to the organization of information,

describing how Google eventually hopes to construct an artificial intelligence that could replace

the human mind. Carr finishes his article by describing how other observers have predicted

negative outcomes as a result of technological change, and how those outcomes were always

belittled by the enormous benefits those technologies provided. To conclude, Carr returns to the

2001: A Space Odyssey scene from the beginning and laments how, in the 2001 version of the

future, the humans have become more robot-like than the robots.

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