In his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid? Carr illustrates the “cathedral-like” people of our society, with strong, driven, and thoughtful minds, like the intricate etched pillars of a beautiful cathedral. However, these kinds of people may soon be lost as technology advances. I think that Carr’s fear of us becoming “pancake people” is real, and something that I also have seen and felt. Not only in my schoolwork, but also in my day-to-day life. However, I do believe that it is a spectrum. I don’t think that anyone wants to become a “pancake person”, but in a world where technology and the internet is available at everyone’s fingertips, it feels as though it’s almost inevitable. The internet has given us shortcuts as people, which slowly chip away at these pillars that we have put up as “cathedral-like” people.

Having access to any information, the answer to any question or the findings of any study right at our fingertips is a lot of responsibility to put on anyone. While it can be extremely helpful to have all your questions answered, it can also be worrisome. You have access to all the good, but also all the bad that lies within the internet, and in the world. In a way, having access to anything at any given time takes away from the human experience. It leads people to worry about what could happen, instead of living in the moment. I don’t think that everyone is meant to have the answers to everything right at their fingertips, because we become much more authentic people when we go out and find our own answers. Having to think about and experience something, rather than just being able to look It up, is something that I would have never thought that I would have come to appreciate as much as I do now. Carr illustrates that our minds “now expects to take in information” in the way the internet presents it, as a “swiftly moving stream of particles” (Carr 2). I find that I completely relate to Carr, because I believe that the shortcuts that technology and the internet have granted us have made us less informed and thoughtful individuals. With the internet, we don’t have to put as much thought into what we do. I feel as though we’ve become lazy as people, and it’s begun to affect the standards that we hold ourselves to. We want to take in information the exact way that we can find it on the internet, but that simply isn’t realistic. Not everything we come across will be short form content that we can skim over, like we do on the internet. Also, with the emergence of AI like ChatGPT, we don’t have to put any effort whatsoever into our written work. Instead, we can rely on technology to do the thinking for us, which is where those “cathedral-like” pillars really begin to collapse.

              I think that Carr offers an interesting perspective when it comes to how we are becoming pancake people, and I find that I agree with it to an extent. I’ve grown up with technology my entire life, and it’s something that other people in my generation have always been exposed to, whether we see its effect on us or not. As Carr puts it, technology is “shaping the neutral circuits inside our brains” (Carr 3). Technology has been growing and developing as we grow and develop as people. As we adapt to this kind of change, it is inevitable that it is going to change us as individuals and change the way our brains have wired themselves. However, everyone has their own relationship with technology and their own experiences, so I feel like everyone has a different idea of what a “pancake person” is, and it shows itself on different levels. Everyone has a completely individual and unique brain, so not everyone is going to be a “pancake” in the exact same way. Not everyone is going to be completely robotic and flat like a “pancake person”, and not everyone is going to put a deep level of thinking and analysis into every little thing they read like a “cathedral person”. As human beings, we have different layers to ourselves, and nobody is going to be a hundred percent of one thing or another. With that being said, I do think that people can absolutely have “pancake” tendencies that they don’t want to admit, or that they don’t even realize. Since this is the only reality, we have ever known, many people might not realize if they are becoming flat, robotic, or too reliant on technology.

I’ve found that in my writing and reading, I sometimes feel like a “pancake person” when I’m using my computer to read or write instead of the more traditional methods. In Carr’s writing, he pulled a quote from Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, “we are not only what we read… we are how we read” (Carr 3). I personally love this level of deep understanding that Wolf offers when it comes to reading, and I find that I feel the exact same way with both my reading and writing. While both a pencil and my laptop are pieces of technology, I find that using my laptop makes my writing feel flatter than when I’m using a pencil. I feel like I have to put so much more thought into my writing when I do it by hand, which is not necessarily a bad thing. My writing tends to come out so much more authentic and more human when I take the extra time and effort to write by hand. When I’m writing by hand, everything flows out of my mind and onto the paper so easily. I feel so connected to my work when I can reach out and feel the indents that my pencil made on the paper. Writing on my laptop just doesn’t give me that same satisfaction. I feel that way with reading as well. When I read on my laptop, I don’t feel as connected to the material as I do when I have a physical copy of a book. I take a lot of pride in the work that I do and create, and my favorite part of my work is the experience and the journey I go through with it. The way that I choose to create and process information has a huge effect on my own level of understanding, and my connection to what I do.  

              With all this being said, I absolutely do still believe that technology is an excellent and important tool that I, and many others, use in our everyday lives. Specifically with my personal relationships, I think that technology is an excellent tool. I have friends that live hundreds and thousands of miles away, and with the emergence of technology, I can talk to them whenever I want. Sending a text or having a phone call is so simple nowadays, and it helps me to maintain my connections with other people that live far away. I’ve begun to really value technology as a tool because of its ability to connect, especially within the past couple of months. I openly and shamelessly use technology every day, but I’m still actively aware of the way that it is shaping me as a person. I think that this level of self-awareness is very valuable to have in the world we are living in, because the wonders and achievements of technology can often blind us to the effects that it has on us.

              In a sense, I think all of us are “pancake people”, whether we are aware of it or not. I think that at this point, it’s inevitable that we are going to find shortcuts and change our thinking to adapt to the way the world around us is changing. Technology is only going to develop further; it’s not going to slow down for anything. As we adapt to the changes, we’ll lose some of the “cathedral-like” tendencies that we value so much from decades ago. However, in future generations, our predecessors will also look back on our lives and wish that they too could have the “cathedral-like” thinking of our generation. It’s a cycle that I believe will go on forever; as time and people change, so do our standards, and the “pancake” world that we are living in now, might be the next generation’s “cathedral-like” world that they will grow to admire.