Persuasive Essay On The Shallows

I hate to admit it. But reading this column will make you stupider. No, it’s not that what I

have to say is particularly obtuse. It’s that you’re reading this piece online, where you are

presented a dizzying amount of options: click here, watch this, and share that. These may

Seem like trivial decisions, but as the amount of online content explodes, our brains have

Consequently learned how to read differently (with constant distractions), which has reshaped how we

learn. While the Internet gives us access to more information than before, paradoxically, we are

becoming dimmer and more superficial as a people. People have been saying that computers are

making us dumber basically since computers existed. Then the Internet came, eventually
On the one hand, our life is now more efficient,

cheaper, simpler and faster thanks to the rise of apps and 24-7 connectivity. On the other hand,

that also exposes the intellectual vulnerability of our offline life — without internet access, even

a 7-year old is smarter than us (so long as she has access to the web) Life has become more

complex but we hardly ever notice it because technology/Google has made complexity simpler

than ever. In the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which was a

finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Nicholas Carr makes the case that technology is inducing an

intellectual decay in our brains. It’s a provocative and even counterintuitive claim but one that he

backs up with ample findings from neuro science. The Internet has indeed changed how we read

and think. But does that really matter? You can just Google for facts and figures. But the richness

of human intelligence is predicated on summoning our long-term memory. Creativity requires

engaging our long-term faculties, in order to create new neural pathways and associations. By

reading incessantly on the Internet, we scatter our minds, lessen our focus, and diminish our
If technology influence also increases, the human brain will not be highly valued. "The human

brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive." This will start

the thinking that if something isn't fast enough, it can just be replaced with something faster and better.

Technology will be considered the best and what was once valued in human beings will be frowned

upon.

In Conclusion, Google can make us feel omniscient. The internet is, indeed making certain users lazy or in Carr’s term “stupid”. The internet supplies us with many distractions which in return forces us to “skim through information.” We don’t get a full understanding about things if our choice of educating ourselves is by glancing atinformation. This is also the case if we were to pick up a book and just read a few pages and expect to get a full understanding about the content. Carr agrees that the internet is a great tool, but the way in which we are using it is what is causing a lack of intelligence and users are starting to have a shorter attention span. The bottom line is that the internet is making us less smarter,ruining our ability for creative input and deep