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Is the Internet actually making us think like idiots? Do you agree to this? Do you feel that your intellectual capacity has decreased over the years? Or have you noticed children perform poorly in their academic work at school due to the Internet. There has been a huge debate on this topic both online and offline especially since Nicholas Carr has highlighted points that may be concerning. The Shallows is an expansion of Carr’s 2008 cover essay in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Most Individuals who are in love with the Internet pretty much curse the book but it’s always good to rethink and ask ourselves if we are indeed rewiring the way we make or brain think. In his book Carr’s has made a desperate attempt to prove that Marshall McLuhan statement may indeed be correct. The statement was “The medium is the message” which meant the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

The book focuses on a variety of aspects of how we behave on the Internet. Nicholas Carr provides neuroscience research to make a convincing case of why he thinks that the Internet is actually making us humans distracted, screen-addicted and incapable of deep, imaginative thought.
He also speaks to his audience through the book that we need to come to grips with how our iPhones and Twitter accounts are changing and deforming the way we think. It sounds a bit scary especially since most of us are in some shape or form connected to the Internet.

It’s important for us to ponder and ask ourselves:

Nicholas Carr’s goes on to explain how search engines have fragmented our knowledge. “We don’t see the forest when we search the Web,” he writes. “We don’t even see the trees. We see twigs and leaves.”
Every technology comes with trade-offs. But do you believe that the Internet is actually damaging the way we think? Is that a worthwhile trade off to play with our minds?

Whatever the end result should be, the one aspect we need to be clear on is to live a fulfilling life. If the constant use of digital media feels like it’s taking a toll on our lives and our ability to focus, then we need to take a step back and rethink the way we use the Internet.
The greatest gift that humans have possessed all along is the ability to do various tasks simultaneously. This has been gifted to us to use by choice not because we depend on doing various tasks to keep us going. The ability to juggle tasks, to keep track of different streams of information needs to be practised but not used day in and out.

Life today can get a bit hectic and make us live life as machines especially if we need facebook, twitter, our ipod , our chats, the radio, etc continuously. This means, we never stop multitasking. Now that can seriously make us weak and damage the essence of why we were born in the first place. Slow down enjoy nature and use the internet as a tool not a survival kit.