On the computer, as soon as my interest wanes, I simply click a new link and I’m on to something else. Reading online blogs, news headlines or email requires less concentration than reading a full-length novel. I feel as if I’m dragging my wayward brain back to the text.” 1Ĭarr suggests that his inability to focus may be the result of acclimating to the fast pace at which information streams across his computer screen. I get fidgety, lose the thread, start looking for something else to do. “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. “Over the past few years, I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory … I’m not thinking the way I used to think,” he writes. The torrent of online data that flows through our days also affects the ways in which we interact with it, argues Nicholas Carr, author of the article, who has written several books and news columns on the subjects of technology and culture. And it also made me think: how often do our patients question our recommendations or even our diagnosis after consulting Google?
The perceived omniscience of Google absolves us of the need to contemplate, discuss and learn. From the long list of comments other readers had posted, I surmised it had made them look at how the online search engine impacts their daily lives. The title-“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”-lured me in ironically, I used Google to find it. N ot long ago, a colleague of mine mentioned an article she had read in The Atlantic, published in 2008 but perhaps even more relevant today.
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