Google Article

The title of the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" basically introduces the argument. The claim is that reading information on the internet makes us "stupid." More specifically, it lowers our attention span and ability to analyze text. The author explains that after using the internet for years he has felt that he cannot pay attention to long articles anymore and just skims longer reads. He is losing his literacy. Literacy according to this passage is the ability to interpret and understand text. This definition of literacy is similar to that of Socrates' Nightmare's definition of literacy. It is not about the ability to read words, but the ability to comprehend and analyze ideas.  This new age of networking has changed peoples' reading habits by enabling a "power browsing" mode to attempt to attain as much information as possible in the least amount of time. This is backed up by evidence of his own experience of skimming and skipping and his friends' experience having the same lack of interest in truly reading something. A study from University College of London also proved this with studies of people jumping to different sources for information after a few pages. Not only does this evidence have a personal aspect because it is the author's personal opinion, but it has a legitimate study backing up the claim. The author realizes that the internet is not going to cease to be used. It has too many advantages to it for users. The author is simply concluding that readers should be careful to be careless. Readers will lose all motivation to learn anything in depth if they continue to exploit the wonders of the internet.