Executive Summary

Hello Rhetoricians,
       My name is Katrina Jackson and welcome to my capstone project blog "Is Google Making us Stupid?" which was created from a survey that I developed. The reason I chose this topic was largely due to a class discussion from an article we were assigned to read in my Senior Seminar class. The article was about "Is Google Making us Stupid?" It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of Atlantic Magazine by writer Nicholas Carr who felt that the human brains are beginning to function like robots. According to Carr, the brain simply filters through information in much of the same ways people rely on the efficiency of the Internet. Carr’s theory is based on his personal experience as well as his friends. His friends were discussing how they were all noticing some changes in their writing abilities, and reading habits.
      There were no statistics to prove the credibility to Carr's claim; furthermore, he sought another opinion from the University, London, who indicated that in order to find any statistics, research had to have began with children at the time of their youth, and gradually studied over time as they had reach undergraduate level, and again, this did not solidify Carr's theory sufficiently.
     My research questions are, are we sacrificing ways in which our brains should function  independently for Internet efficiency, and have we become too dependent or not independent enough to the world of technology?
      As everyone individually voiced their opinions on the topic in class, my instructor made a comment that she thought it would make for an interesting capstone project. I thought it would be a good project as well, but some how I wanted to challenge Carr's claim. I really had a desire to develop something that would possibly prove Carr’s claim to either be credible or not credible, or even as much as not being able to determine his claim at all. I decided to develop a survey questionnaire about how people use technology and how it may or may not affect their reading and writing skills.
     My purpose for this type project is to challenge Carr's claim and attempt to determine if the long term use of the Internet is depleting individual’s innate abilities to read in-depth, and brainstorm ideas to write instead of using the Internet to think for them. As you numerically follow each blog, each one will explain the research results from the survey.
      While you review results, you may ask yourself if you feel you are someone affected by high efficiency of technology engagement; on the other hand, you might wonder why some people were not tapped into  other levels of technology and communication through Internet. What steps would you take to change the way you use the Internet? I found the results during the course of the survey to be quite interesting, and I hope that you will discover revelations of your own while viewing the survey questions, comments, and survey results of this blog.