Is Google Making Us Stupid?

The article argues that the quick and easy access to information on the Internet has decayed our ability to think deeply. It describes the Internet as another technological advancement that has been criticized as the ones before it such as writing, the printing press, and the typewriter. All of these technologies were criticized by philosophers of  their respected times. Also, the ability to read lenghy articles or written works is slowly being lost as a result of the Internet. The writer says he has lost the ability to dive into a long work of prose because of the immediacy of other articles and blogs. His mind wanders and drifts off from what he is reading after so long. Literacy is described in this article very similarily to the definition given in "Socrates Nightmare." That is, the ability to deeply think and analyze is being lost because of how our brains are reprogramming themselves to read like the Internet- short articles and skimming long ones. The author uses the example of Google and their strive for effieciency as one piece of evidence of this loss of literacy. Another piece of evidence he uses is the study done by the University College London which gave the results that people "bounced" from page to page instead of completely reading the articles. One more piece of evidence he uses is the New York Times. He tells how their articles are shorter so the reader gets the daily information they are seeking faster. The reason all of this is relevant is because everyone will need to be literate if they are to live in today's world and the Internet is changing the meaning of the word itself through its programming. Our brains are reprogramming themselves to read how the Internet tells us to read which is slowly decaying our analyzation and deep thinking abilities.