"Is Google making us stupid?"

"WE ARE HOW WE READ."
I want to first point out the obvious irony of this article: Nick Carr plainly states that he "... can't read War and Peace anymore... I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it." Yet, he writes a lengthy article to of which he must have edited himself, thus showing his capability of reading, comprehending, and following a subject he actually finds intellectually stimulating.
When I read his simple metaphor: "Once I was a scuba diver in sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski" very appropriate to the subject matter. I like this metaphor for two reasons. One: I find this visual representation of his literary history very easy to understand. Two: It justifies a lot of peoples' relationships with the Internet and how easy it is to use or obtain any and all information.
Also, while reading this, I can't help but think about the fact of Americans and the concept of "instant gratification." The Internet is a huge supplier of instant gratification and people find that very appealing. Instant being fast and the Internet having results in 0.12 seconds, according to google.com and searching for information regarding "typos."
"It almost seems they go online to avoid reading in a traditional sense."
Spark notes: exhibit A.
I really enjoyed reading this article. A lot. I become another statistic dealing with the subject of reading and it not being one of my strong suits, let alone, one of my favorite hobbies. I am a lot of those people that psychologists and researchers point out. I skim everything, if I can, "mumble reading," only saying a recognizable word every 30 words or so, as I speed through the media. Although, in my defense, I am reading a lot more nowadays, for recreational purposes. I have to thank Stephanie Meyer for that because it was her Twilight Saga that made me fall in love with the written word again. but, then I fall right back out with an assignment on the character flaws that led to Reverend Dimmsdale's fall in the Scarlet Letter, having to read The Scarlet Letter.
It's horrible.
When I was little and we had the standardized testing in elementary school, I always scored the lowest on the reading comprehension portions, despite the math portions, but that is a whole other battle. Furthermore, I was "diagnosed?" with ADD in, comically enough, my second attempt at fourth grade. I can definitely, without a doubt, see eye to eye with Nick Carr and understand completely why he cannot read War and Peace anymore. It's so clear. I mean, according to Ms. Wolf, my neural circuits really must work hard to translate symbolic characters found in books, etc.
I believe, according to this article and my own personal struggle with other types of learning, a large part of the population are visual learners. (I am a visual learner.) Books and lengthy articles, etc. require our minds to go places that require us to use our imagination, but sometimes, we can't get our brain to go to those places because the stimulation is so weak and "boring." I can read a whole chapter, but not comprehend any of it because I was thinking about that time I ate food off another person's table at that sushi restaurant. That is the story of my life. Therefore, instead, I skim and give my brain no room or chance to think about anything else, because it knows that I will be done the "torture" in a matter of seconds or minutes, as opposed to a lot of minutes or hours.
And like the article states, in one way or another, I don't believe Google is making us stupid, but how much individuals depend on Google and how they utilize their "Internet paths" is not as bright, I don't want to say stupid because there are many things in this world that are worthy of being labeled stupid.
I was just writing whatever came into my mind, thus the sporadic spurts of opinions and information displayed here in an essay-like format.

sea of words < jet ski