A Brief Look At Nick Carr

Where would the world stand without technology? Without a doubt, it would be a less advanced society. But, is the advancement of the technological world harming people in a subtle way? With the help of his sources, Nick Carr conveys a belief that intellectual technologies such as the internet are affecting people's minds in a subtly negative way. Although he states that he might just be worrisome, included in his article are examples from bloggers and research studies showing how people's minds progressively change. In addition to examples from bloggers and research, he brings in present day and historical anecdotes about how people's minds are always changing by the constantly changing intellectual technologies.. Through his writing style
and use of sources he aligned himself with the beliefs of his sources. Almost all of the sources Carr uses state that the evolution of minds are a progressively negative thing. Nick Carr is a man who fancies himself a connoisseur of themes having to do with technology and its effect on the world.
This is shown in his four books, one named “Utopia is Creepy” and one of his articles published by the Washington, DC based magazine The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In his 2008 article, Carr starts off with an anecdote from the movie “A Space Odyssey”. The scene is one where HAL, the supercomputer malfunctions almost killing Dave, The astronaut. With this opening, Carr brings in the idea that minds are changing because of technology. Following this anecdote, he continues to describe how he believes that his own mind is changing. He talks about how he used to be able to read long texts with ease but recently he has had trouble following along. Carr is not the only one who feels that his mind is changing. Scott Karp, a blogger who wrote about online media. Karp stated that he used to be a voracious reader and then as he got more involved with the online world, the way he reads and processes written works has changed greatly(Carr 3). Carr mentioned Karp’s idea because of the similarities between both of their thoughts on the way their minds are
changing.
Afterwards, Carr gives many present day and historical anecdotes,though he states that they don't mean very much. Following this statement, he writes about a study done by the University of London following peoples online research habits. This study concluded with the fact that people who visited the sites in the study participated in “a form of skimming activity” (Carr 4). Carr talks about the study to tie an example into his previous statement of peoples’ changing minds. Correspondingly, Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University was introduced .Wolf determines that this change in reading habits was brought about because of texting. He believes that texting has caused people to write and read in “a style that puts efficiency and immediacy above all else” (Carr 4). Although people today read more now than they ever did in the past, the content has changed immensely. Readers today value efficiency, a trend brought about by texting short messages. In addition, Wolf states that reading is not an instinctive skill, but one “we have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters” (Carr 5) and the media we use plays a big part in how people’s minds process data and readings today.
Furthermore, Carr follows up with the research studies by including historical anecdotes to tie examples together to represent that people's minds change constantly because of technology. “Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter... the machine had a subtler effect on his work. Friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic…” (Carr 5). What Carr is trying to bring across is that for as long as there have been advances in technologies, these advances have affected people, whether it's affecting the ways they write like Nietzsche or changing the reading habits of Scott Karp. Carr also uses the narrative of MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, who observed that since timekeeping devices became popular, peoples habits have changed to become more clockwork, in a way that people do everything on a schedule after its popularization. Weizenbaum observed that with the popularization of the clock. This narrative leads into Carr’s introduction of the concept intellectual technologies, tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities. Such technologies include the clock, the typewriter, the printing press and the tv.
According to Carr, the most powerful and prevalent intellectual technology today is the internet, which is absorbing all of the other intellectual technologies into one processing system.
Carr states that the internet is becoming all encompassing, so much so that every time people do anything on the internet, it's tracked and the information they gather on internet users is used to feed them advertisements. In spite of his previous statements stating he believes minds are changing, he counters by expressing”Maybe I’m just a worrywart”(Carr 10). Subsequently, he says that there's a tendency to see the bad in technological advancement and brings in a historical anecdote timestamped at about 400B.C. in which Socrates sorrows over the advancement of writing, stating that writing down events will cause people to weaken their memory and forget important things. Carr communicates to his readers to be skeptical of his skepticism about how intellectual technologies are changing people's minds. He declares that people should make their own assumptions about whether these intellectual technologies are affecting the way people think and process
information. With all of the presented facts and perspectives presented along with the allocated argument that individual technologies alter minds in the way that it changes the way that people analize long texts and process information that they receive, I agree that people's minds have regressed to skip over long chunks of texts and lose concentration in similar areas. Carr and his multiple sources state that all advances in technologies change people, from the changing how people write caused by the typewriter to the clockwork acts and schedules people follow following the invention and popularization of the clock. I have noticed all the changes that they mentioned in myself, especially my reading habits. Like Scott Karp and Bruce Friedman, two bloggers who noticed their changing reading habits, I also started out as a voracious reader who would sit still for hours and read without pause. Sadly, such acts have become more difficult following my start of using the internet and getting more involved in the online world. Carr barrages the readers with examples and stories of people changing due to these intellectual technologies, causing the readers to go back and analyze their own minds and actions. His article accomplished exactly that, it has caused me to draw on the conclusion that the research studies Carr included and the narrative from all points in history and bloggers stores had significant backing in relevancy. These examples made me realize that the once loved the act of devouring endless books now seemed more of a chore than enjoyment. This started happening at an increasing pace once I started getting more involved in things such as social media and started relying on the internet to be my main source of entertainment. These days, when debating on entertainment, the internet almost always wins out against reading.
Is the advancement of technology a good thing or a negative thing. According to Nick Carr and his sources, technology is changing people's minds in a negative way. People’s attention spans are growing increasingly shorter when it comes to reading. Because of texting and short messages, reading long passages is now seen as a chore. Readers resort to skimming long passages rather than reading it in depth.