Article Summaries

In Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he is talking about how although many people are actually reading more than before, they are interpreting and reading the material in a different way because of the internet. Nicholas Carr is saying how the way we research and use the internet to do everything is changing the way people think, because instead of having to research with books, they just go online and can go from site to site in matters of seconds. People believe that our brains used to work like clockwork but now that we use the computer and the internet so often they are working like computers. Neuroscientists say that our brains change at a biological level when adapting to new technologies. The internet is now used for almost all the other technologies we need, like a tv, clock, calculator and others. The way the internet sends us the information it scatters our brains to different things at once and makes ours concentration levels really low. Nicholas Carr is stating that Google, wants to be the "perfect search engine" so they can give the people using it exactly what they want faster than anything else would be able to, in order to make people think and read information faster. The owners of Google, want to make a search engine that can take the place of the human brain, because they think the brain is like an outdated computer.
In Chris Hedge's article, "The Internet is No Substitution for the Dying Newspaper Industry" is about how the internet is not going to save the newspaper industry. Chris Hedge is saying that although almost all newspapers have websites they are still doing bad because the internet is only bringing in a small portion of the revenue for the newspaper. The internet is challenging the way people get news, because if they are reading online instead of watching the news or reading the newspaper they go to sites that agree with their beliefs. Chris Hedge says that about 80 percent of reporting is done by newspaper and wire service, so without them we would be missing something. The news gives us all the information even if we do not agree with it, unlike blogs who say the writers opinion and two different blogs about the same topic can be completely different because of the writers opinion and because they are free to write what they want and can not get in trouble for it, like newspaper writers would. When readers read the New York Times online they are not reading completely they are browsing and skimming. The corporate companies in the United States are controlling the news, and they would rather not have the citizens hear the real news because that would lead to them asking questions. The companies are making the news amusing and entertaining instead of informational and boring.
I agree with both authors of these articles, because I do believe that the internet is changing the way we think and process information. Although I think it is changing us I think it is for the better not for the worse. I believe that people know more than they would without the internet because even if they aren't looking for information they learn things about topics they weren't looking up because of headlines, and advertisements on the pages they are reading. Although people are not reading the articles and research completely they are skimming and getting through more articles than they would if they had to do research with books and without the internet's help. I also agree with Nicholas Carr that the computer is taking the place of many of our other technologies, instead of using a calculator, you can type a math eqaution into google and it gives you an answer which is sometimes faster than using an actual calculator. The internet is used by many people to watch tv shows that they missed, you can find almost any tv show online, which in the past you would have had to remember to set a vcr to record the show. In my opinion the internet is helping people read and find out news and things that are happening in the society, because there are more people that will read the news on the internet because they saw something about it on another website they were on, then go out and get an actual newspaper. I disagree with Nicholas Carr because I don't think the internet is something that is bad because yes it is changing the way people process information because they don't read full articles. I don't read the newspaper because the articles are too long and annoying to read, but I would skim through articles online to learn what is going on in our society.