Are We Slowing Losing our Touch?

After reading Carr’s piece about the fears he has that search engines and the internet is making is stupider, I realize that I am not the only one who has noticed a difference in the way I function; and not only myself, but also everyone around me and even education itself. Nicholas Carr answers this question as follows, “If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.” (7). Carr believes that the internet is taking away different parts of our brain and making them have desolate spots which are ignited only by a new event on the internet such as breaking news, a new email, instant message, or text on our phones. The sense that slowly piece by piece we are being stripped of our intellectual attributes and becoming machines and trading spots with the machines we created as he compares us to the final scene in the book, 2001: A Space Odyssey. He believes that we are using our minds differently by being able to navigate on the internet but becoming so dependent on websites such as Google that we are losing that skill of searching things in libraries for example or critical thinking.
Our conversation in class today however, makes Carr’s argument difficult to swallow; these websites do make us lazier, but allow us to be able to take in more information quickly and be able to store it in our heads. With a click of a button we are able to jump from one culture to another and learn about them. Unlike the old methods of doing research on other countries/different regions or whatnot by getting the most recent library book available which could be an outdated copy, you can go online and explore the world firsthand and get immediate updates if necessary. Nevertheless, on a personal note, I have to agree with Carr that our way of thinking and translating the information we get has changed; now the thought process is if the information is not recent as in the last five minutes recent, then its old news and we need to move on to another site/activity to do.