How much do we rely on Google

        The impact that the Internet has on out lives might as well be equivalent to the impact that water has for fish. I mean seriously, most people are constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, texts, inboxes, emails etc. Every few seconds whether it is conscience or sub conscience “we” are looking to see what others are doing. In that same sense, Google is always trying to see what “we” are up to. Carr’s chapter about the church of google talks about Google’s rise from its beginning as a Stanford project to the empire we all now are familiar with. The large success of the company which is worth billions and billions of dollars, tries to be as efficient as possible.  

Each time someone searches into the google search bar, it is recorded. Every time someone clicks the ads on the sit, it is recorded. Google’s aim is for the Internet user to be in and out as quickly as possible. There is no denying that Google is a huge tool at our disposal. If you wanted to look up how far the deepest lake in the world is, you could find it. Or if you hear something on TV and question it, you can just “Google” it. We have become so reliant on the fact that we can just “Google” stuff that I think we have become addicted Google. Carr’s book may be very dull and sometimes repetitive, but one thing is for sure it makes you think deeper about what kind of society we live in. 

The tech-savvy society that we all know and couldn’t fathom living without, I think will forever change future societies. If we look at the past three generations of people, most now use some sort of technological device. Things from a cell phone all the way the anything starting with an “i”. Little children play on a i-pad better than some adults, most teenagers can’t be away from their phones long enough to realize life functioned without cellphones before. The fact that wifi Internet access can be accessed almost anywhere with just a few clicks of screen taps. We rely so heavily on our technology that simple things such as looking up a restaurant in the phone book is seen as tedious, so instead we “Google” them to find the number. 

Carr touched upon intelligence in the chapter before the “Church of Google” and for the first time so far I actually agreed with something he said. It was a brief paragraph at the end saying that it is not a fact that we are smarter or dumber than previous societies based off of our technological advances. However, “we” just think in a different way than previous people. I whole-heartily agree with that because of personal experience. I look at other generations of people and we all could be faced with the same problem, but all look at it differently. It seems as though with all our gadgets and gizmos we should be just as efficient as Google is making itself. But many, many years from now hopefully we are somewhat of ways there. 

Shane Murphy