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"Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains" (alternatively "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?") is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition. It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of ''The Atlantic'' magazine as a six-page cover story. Carr's main argument is that the Internet might have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. Despite the title, the article is not specifically targeted at Google, but more at the cognitive impact of the Internet and World Wide Web.〔〔 Carr expanded his argument in ''The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains'', a book published by W. W. Norton in June 2010. The essay was extensively discussed in the media and the blogosphere, with reactions to Carr's argument being polarised. At the Britannica Blog, a part of the discussion focused on the apparent bias in Carr's argument toward literary reading. In Carr's view, reading on the Internet is generally of a shallower form in comparison with reading from printed books in which he believes a more intense and sustained form of reading is exercised. Elsewhere in the media, the Internet's impact on memory retention was discussed; and, at the online scientific magazine ''Edge'', several argued that it was ultimately the responsibility of individuals to monitor their Internet usage so that it does not impact their cognition. While long-term psychological and neurological studies have yet to yield definitive results justifying Carr's argument, a few studies have provided glimpses into the changing cognitive habits of Internet users.〔 A UCLA study led some to wonder whether a breadth of brain activity—which was shown to occur while users performed Internet searches in the study's functional MRI scans—actually facilitated reading and cognition or possibly overburdened the mind; and what quality of thought could be determined by the additional presence of brain activity in regions known to control decision-making and complex reasoning skills. ==Background== Prior to the publication of Carr's ''Atlantic'' essay, critics had long been concerned about the potential for electronic media to supplant literary reading. In 1994, American academic Sven Birkerts published a book titled ''The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age'', consisting of a collection of essays that declaimed against the declining influence of literary culture—the tastes in literature that are favored by a social group—with a central premise among the essays asserting that alternative delivery formats for the book are inferior to the paper incarnation.〔〔 Birkerts was spurred to write the book after his experience with a class he taught in the fall of 1992, where the students had little appreciation for the literature he had assigned them, stemming from, in his opinion, their inaptitude for the variety of skills involved in deep reading.〔 In "Perseus Unbound", an essay from the book, Birkerts presented several reservations toward the application of interactive technologies to educational instruction, cautioning that the "long-term cognitive effects of these new processes of data absorption" were unknown and that they could yield "an expansion of the short-term memory banks and a correlative atrophying of long-term memory". In 2007, developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf took up the cause of defending reading and print culture in her book ''Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain'', approaching the subject matter from a scientific angle in contrast to Birkerts' cultural-historical angle.〔〔 A few reviewers were critical of Wolf for only touching upon the Internet's potential impact on reading in her book; however, in essays published concurrent with the book's release she elaborated upon her worries. In an essay in ''The Boston Globe'', Wolf expressed her grave concern that the development of knowledge in children who are heavy users of the Internet could produce mere "decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes", and cautioned that the web's "immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge". In an essay published by Powell's Books, Wolf contended that some of the reading brain's strengths could be lost in future generations "if children are not taught first to read, and to think deeply about their reading, and only then to e-read". Preferring to maintain an academic perspective, Wolf firmly asserted that her speculations have not yet been scientifically verified but deserved serious study.〔 In Carr's 2008 book ''The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google'', the material in the final chapter, "iGod", provided a basis for his later ''Atlantic'' magazine article titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"〔 The inspiration to write "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" came from the difficulties Carr found he had in remaining engaged with not only books he had to read but even books that he found very interesting.〔 This is sometimes called deep reading, a term coined by academic Sven Birkerts in his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' and later defined by developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf with an added cognitive connotation.〔〔Carr, Nicholas (July 2008). "(Is Google Making Us Stupid? )". ''The Atlantic'' 301 (6). 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