Pessimism: Carr and Hedges

The scariest thing about reading Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” is probably the fact that I totally relate to the article’s pessimistic claim. Carr uses historical examples, scientific research, and psychological experiments to defend his position that the advent of the Internet has weakened society’s mental capacity. In effect, Google is indeed making us stupid. Our society’s means of processing information has become “staccato”-like. We jump from one passage of text to another, skimming the surface of a deep ocean of information. The Internet places a value on efficiency above everything else. Due to this overriding obsession with immediacy and efficiency we are no longer able to concentrate through complex readings in the same way generations before us were. Carr includes an important quote by developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf, who states, “We are not only what we read. We are how we read.” Reading poorly produces an intellectually poor society. Christ Hedge’s “America the Illiterate” proclaims that America has transformed into an image-based society. A staggering forty-two percent of American adults cannot read and therefore depend on images to gather information. Images, as well as slogans and catchy branding, feed Americans’ minds. It is no secret that of this reliance on the abstract produces a naïve and easily persuadable society. Because of the huge illiteracy crisis Americans lack the ability to access written ideas and require a “constant stimulus.” Hedges, a proclaimed socialist, seems to diss the Christian, conservative right in his article. This weakens his authority to an extent because a clear case of bias is represented. In any case, both Carr’s and Hedges’ articles reveal a dim reality for American literacy: our generation’s dependence on the internet limits our learning capacity, concentration, and depth of prosperity; intellectual society is in a free fall.