Carr VS Hedges

In Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr firmly believes that not only Google, but rather the internet as a whole is making us more likely to just skim articles rather than read them. Carr is explaining this when he says, “the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” He goes on to say, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Carr firmly believes that the more we are on the web, the harder it will become for us to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Continually, Chris Hedges’s article, “America the Illiterate”, argues that America as a whole is becoming more and more illiterate. Hedges says in his article, “Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate.” He also says that this number goes up by about 2 million people a year. By having such a high illiteracy rate, Hedges claims that people will stop thinking for them selves. For example, if a presidential candidate appears to be making point that an individual agrees with, that individual is sold and will vote for that candidate. People will not check what they hear anymore, they will not read up on their favorite candidate to make sure his plans meet his claim. Also, Hedges uses the example that people go to McDonalds not because they like the food but because there are pictures on the menu for them to pick from. There is a huge connection between Carr’s article and Hedges’s article. Carr argues that because of the Internet, people are not reading in depth, they are just skimming. People may know a lot of topics but are not well informed on any of them. Carr says, “we risk turning into ‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin.” This relates to Hedges because Hedges believes that people have lost the ability to think for themselves so they are not informed on topics passed what they see on the news.