In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Nicholas Carr argues his deep concern on the use of the Internet and how it is affecting our brains. Carr feels like he has built upon the habit of skimming through articles for research. As a frequent user he has built such a strong habit of this that he can now no longer have the patience to sit down and read an actual book. For it lacks the instant gratification he is so used to getting from the Internet: "What the net seems to be doing is chipping away from my capacity for concentration and contemplation," Carr confesses. The Internet is changing the way its user’s minds process information. People are losing concentration easier than before and instead of truly reading material, they are skimming and mentally…
In the article, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is making us less attentive and overall less intelligent, Which in his opinion is making us "dumber". Carr’s article refers to a growing body of scientific work to prove his point. A study conducted at Cornell University revealed that while some areas such as visual-spatial intelligence are increased by internet use, "new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes," such as "abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination" are rising. In my opinion, I agree with him, having technology constantly around us results in a lot of distractions which could be simply avoided by not having it there in the first place, We are limiting…
The general argument made by Nicholas Carr in his work, “From The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” is that technology is dangerous to the brain, conditioning the body that they need more technology, and less of anything else. More Specifically, Carr states that, “I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article...Now my consideration starts to drift after a page or two” (Carr par. 2). In this passage, Carr is suggesting that the effects of technology and the internet have imposed on him that he needs the internet to function at a proper level. He thinks that this is going to be a problem in the future of society. He is suggesting that we will be unable to communicate…
Nicholas Carr, a writer for New York Times, and Wired, wrote a piece labeled “is Google making us stupid?”. Within the text Nicholas Carr shows us how the use of technology and the internet are changing the way our brains process information.…
In Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to our Brains,” he makes the powerful point that in order to assume technology’s power, especially intellectual technology, we must pay a particularly high price. Carr states this idea in one quote from his book, “The price we pay to assume technologies power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. the tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities- those for reason perception, memory, emotion(pg 211).” This price for intellectual technologies can range from a lowered ability to pull up memorized information, a shorter attention span, having a harder time learning new information, or even a changed perception of our world. All of these points help show how the internet is affecting our brains physically and mentally.…
Straight into the beginning, Carr starts his article with a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave is trying to disconnect HAL, the space robot, from its artificial brain because of the mishaps HAL made. Carr uses this scene to connect to how he can feel that the internet is reprogramming his brain negatively to think differently than how it was before. He includes how he is struggling with the negative effects of technology that he developed like poor concentration. Carr mentions that anyone can fall into training their brain into losing the capacity to focus, including him. He has difficulty focusing on reading after two or three pages and begins to look for something else to do. Carr states that the internet “is chipping…
Language has changed so much over time, in good and some bad ways. Today we have so many different definitions to language, most definitions depend on our culture, and others come from the way we live our every day life as an individual. Language to me is not only the way that we speak or write, language is the way we present our thoughts to other people. I say that it 's not only about writing or speaking to one another, because today we have many other ways of communicating with other people all around the world, whether that is in person or it is with someone thousands of miles away. A huge example of this, would be with all the new and improved technology that we have…
Bright screens with backlighting, noisy keyboards, quiet touch pads, swiping to turn the page, all great examples of futuristic technologies; books were at one point a futuristic technology, but now they're a thing of the past. What happened? Swiping became easier than turning; backlighting in screens became easier than managing a book light; typing became easier than written annotations. In Alan Carr's novel, The Shallows (2011), he writes, "The price we pay to assume technology's power is alienation," (Carr 211). What Carr doesn’t mention is the high taxes we pay in addition to the price of alienation.…
According to Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows, the Net is changing the way people view and live their everyday lives, and is the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use since the book. One can agree with Carr’s thesis because it is easily supported by observing the changing culture of humanity. Due to rapidly advancing and expanding technology, human beings are dealing with memory issues and diminishing human interaction. The Net is changing the way people view and live their everyday lives, and is the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use since the book. People view technology as computers and phones but it is a widespread of so much more.…
than ever. In the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which was a…
In the Frontline video titled Digital Nation, Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff explored the impact of digital media on today’s society. In the video they cover everything from it’s impact on the brain, to it’s impact on students, to it’s impact on the military. Nothing is spared in this investigation on the effect of digital media, and growing up in a wired world. However the main thing I managed to take away from this film was it has had a dramatic effect on human abilities and communication, which I will be discussing in the following paragraphs.…
In an essay written by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google making us Stupid?", Carr argues how the Internet may diminish our capacity for concentration and contemplation. He himself has experiences lack of concentration like the student. He explains, "….I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore." But it furthermore then just diminishing the capacity for concentration, the internet according to Carr also affects the way of thinking. Carr clarify, "Today, in age of software, we have come to think them as operating "like computers." But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain's plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level." Much like the student, she…
While Johnson argues that television is having a positive effect on the society and is making us smarter, Carr contends that Internet, especially Google, makes us stupid and is detrimental in our growth as intellectual beings. While both authors are taking completely different paths, they still have a lot of similarities in their thought processes. If one considers each argument separately instead of together, one can infer that both authors are considering arguments that defy what the current society and tradition teaches us. Also, both of these authors try to examine the changes in our society due to the incoming of media like Google and television.…
Ever since the advent of the modern digital culture, there have been some heated discussions on the topic of whether technology is a foe or a friend. Some people argue that it is influencing us negatively, scattering our attention and diffusing our concentration, while others believe otherwise, suggesting that it is making our lives more efficient and convenient. The emergence of such technology not only enhances some of our fundamental cognitive abilities, but also enables us to explore more of what is we are truly interested in.…
In Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, he talks about many things, including the titular topic of What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. He relates the story of the development of the written word, and the book, and the computer, and then the Internet, telling how the advent of each sparked a revolution in our culture, and, in the case of the internet, in the way we think, going on to say that “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, 7) due to his interactions with the internet. He provides a story that could give an answer to the question we’ve been asking. How is the exponential increase of information that we process in all forms of media affecting the way we live?…