This revelation (to me at least) about Google’s future plans for the human race is a dramatic high point in Carr’s article, but his central claim is what has already been going on in the world and our brains without many of us realizing it. Carr intelligently brings us up to speed about our reading experiences (pun intended) today. While those in the reading world may be doing so much more than ever before, we may not be doing it in the same capacity, the same way, or even using the same parts of our brains to do it with. Carr explains that before access to the internet became a household commodity people’s reading habits were much different, and when you stop to think about it you know he has a point. Reading mediums today like the internet indulge people in ways books cannot; not only to its seemingly infinite abyss of information, but at a sporadic and yet selective and rapid pace, of which Carr calls
“power browsing”.Along with the internet other mediums for information output, like television and newspapers, are following suit and offering innovative ways for receivers (the public) to more efficiently scan and select and take-in information. Carr also explains the scientific consensus of the malleable adult brain. The brain in all stages of life is never static, but in-fact is constantly adapting to its intake and environment. Measurable physiological changes occur in adult brains, evolving according to how we use it. Synapses change, new ones form, and obsolete ones go out of use and quit functioning. So in effect our brains are constantly being rewired. So as our reading habits have changed, which is evidenced by the changing and flashing digital mediums and modes of information and communication today, so have our brains. The internet is a playground and breeding ground for attention span deficiencies. According to Carr many people, including him, are having a hard time reading books the way they used to. He says that he grows disinterested more quickly and often gets fidgety and distractible while trying to delve into a new book. The best point though that I think Carr makes about those who are not reading books anymore is that missing out on the information provided by authors in the printed pages of books is not the real problem, but rather lost is what is inspired by an author’s words and generated within one’s self by the engagement in deep reading. Carr states that what is valuable and lacking within modern reading habits is
“the intellectual vibrations an author’s words [sic] set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.”Carr argues that the same kind of contemplation, reflection, and introspection that is fostered by deep reading is lost completely in the world of the flashing, fleeting digital pages of the internet. Reading habits associated with the internet equate to little more than just gathering information rather than taking the time to reflect on it and refine the raw resource for oneself.
Can Carr’s argument of a changing in the way we read, and replacing deep reading with power browsing web pages, be completely blamed on the internet though? Or is the internet just another bit of evidence and correlation of this change? What if the cause is some even more-broad social phenomenon like the population boom and competition to achieve the varieties of information, and the interdisciplinary aspects of professions these days that help to drive that. The internet of course has revolutionized the access and production of information but what if it itself is just another effect and reflection of what our society has become or demands. The style of reading that the internet promotes isn’t the only thing of which Carr describes as efficient and immediate above all else, but just as with texting, the electric razor, and the pop tart, those are defining qualities of what is important to society today. The need for efficiency has been growing since the Industrial Revolution and the emerging of new technologies over time; from interchangeable parts to the cotton gin and efficiency in killing with a rifle and automatic guns. The history of communications shows the drive toward immediacy and access; from the printing press to the telegraph and telephone to satellites. I don’t think the changing of our reading habits and the implications of this are entirely the fault of the internet, but rather a trend in history that has been waiting for something like the internet to come along and feed.
After making his point on how the internet has already changed and is continuing to change our brains, Carr anxiously states,
"Where does it end?"
Carr then quotes the founders of Google and their goal to create the "ultimate search engine [which] is something as smart as people--or smarter". Basically, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page want to use the "perfect search engine" to create what they themselves deem "artificial intelligence". But this kind of artificial intelligence wouldn't be separate from the human kind, but rather would be physically interconnected with human minds while seeking to improve and manipulate the way we gather our own intelligence or information. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt defines this perfect search engine
"as something that 'understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want'".Carr actually quotes Brin saying,
"Certainly if you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain you'd be better off".It scares me that those with as much power, resources, and money at their disposal as those who run Google, and who want to revolutionize and exploit the world, are working from that frame of mind. Carr calls it appropriately, “unsettling”.
So where does it end? Corporations already want nothing more than to control society and its consumers and policy makers, and are utterly consumed with greed. Actually the ultimate goal at Google is not to create the perfect search engine; it’s the same as every other corporation in the capitalist world, and that is to extract as much money and sustenance from the people and resources of the world as possible for the gluttonous growth and soul avariciousness of the company and its benefactors. In no way should a monster like that be allowed to create the monster that Google is boasting to be heading toward. I mean Google is talking about access to our brains, and to something that will be smarter than us no less. As with all new technologies that change societies, there are always drawbacks and liberties that have to be given to solve new problems. This idea however seems to have the potential in a variety of ways to be much more disastrous than helpful to the common man. Most people will say to this, just don’t use the technology then. Just opt out of the applications of it, stay keen and keep doing your thing. It’s not that simple though. This isn’t going to revolutionize mountain climbing or something. The scary part about technologies like this that penetrate society so, is that they become integral to it. A hundred years ago cars and finance were revolutionizing the times but we didn’t have to have them; cars were just the convenient new thing that was catching on widely. Fast forward a little and it is hard to function in society let alone compete in it without a car or a bank account. So maybe no one is forcing us physically, but to get anywhere in society we are forced to accommodate to the use of these things. Fifteen years ago it was ok not to have internet; it was big sure, but not everyone needed to have it yet. Today if someone doesn’t have access to the internet, they are completely out of touch, and by society’s standards, not ok. This can be true with any other widespread or exploitative technology to come. Right now we manipulate the internet; wait until it manipulates us. The only thing we have over the internet and processors is the ability to think abstractly and that we are the ones pushing the buttons and in control—or are we?
